


The Bride

by LauraNightingale



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, The Bachelorette (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reality Show, F/M, Soft Ben Solo, TW: Racism, extremely misunderstood Ben, ft. soft boi Ben, my favorite kind of Ben, the bachelorette au, this will be explicit eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:15:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 60,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22460983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LauraNightingale/pseuds/LauraNightingale
Summary: Rey Johnson never expected to have any sort of career in reality TV, much less become the next Bride. She only competed onThe Groomin the first place because she’d been too drunk one night to resist filling out an application.Somehow, Rey captured the hearts of viewers all across America, and now she’s starring in the next season ofThe Bride. Suddenly, Rey finds herself surrounded by thirty eligible bachelors from every corner of the nation (some more eligible than others). She should be enjoying herself and falling in love, right?Unfortunately, reality TV demands drama, and while that’s not exactly news to Rey, she didn’t expect to be so truly bothered by the man the show’s producers had designated as the season villain, Kylo Ren.
Relationships: Kylo Ren & Rey, Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 572
Kudos: 683





	1. Week 1

**Author's Note:**

>   
>   
> 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey meets the contestants, delivers an opening night toast, and gives away the First Impression Rose.

Rey doesn't really know why she went on _The Groom_ in the first place.

It was just one of those shows. You gather around the couch, you watch it with your best mates, you drink cheap wine and chuck popcorn at the screen over all the dramatic moments. It was silly, it was stupid, it was _fun_.

That's all it was supposed to be.

And then one night, after a particularly fun episode, Rose got it in her head that she should sign up for the next season of _The Groom_. And she'd been just drunk enough at the time to do it.

So she got picked, and somehow she went on the show. That was when she saw the Groom.

His name was Cassian Andor. He was a pilot, and he was dreamy in just about every way you could imagine. He was smart, and funny, and he laughed at her jokes. And God forbid, she _liked_ him.

And somehow, Rey made it all the way to the very end, the season finale, the moment when he was supposed to drop down on one knee and ask her to marry him.

She waited, heart in her throat, perched next to Jyn Erso on that platform as Cassian held the final rose in his hands.

She left that day in tears, of course.

She hadn't counted on how deeply her heartbreak had resonated with the nation. They loved her. They Venmo'd her wine money, and her Instagram blew up overnight.

Rey got the call a few weeks later asking her to be the next Bride.

She said yes.

"HELLOOOO, _Entourage_ Nation! Welcome back to another season of _The Bride,_ and please join us…for our most dramatic season _ever_!"

A thin, wizened old man in a sharp suit addresses the studio audience. "I'm your host, Snoke, and tonight is the world premiere of our first rose ceremony. Who's excited?"

The audience erupts into thunderous cheering and applause, waving signs and flags high above their heads and going wild. They only settle down when Snoke gestures with his hands for the volume to come down.

"Now, last year, Rey Johnson won hearts all over America when she competed on _The Groom_ for Cassian's heart." Snoke gives a slow smile, and clips start to play on the TV screen behind him.

A picture of Rey comes onto the screen, short and pretty, with a pert nose and a cluster of freckles across her face. "Hello, I'm Rey Johnson, and I'm an attorney from Cleveland, Ohio." Her words carry a distinct west London dialect. "My family lived in Westminster when I was younger, but we moved to the States when I turned seven." A sudden sneeze cuts her off, twisting her features into a grotesque expression, and then she blinks at the camera for several long moments. "Can we try that again?"

Cut to Rey, marching confidently along the busy streets of downtown Cleveland, dressed in a flowing bohemian dress and a purse to match slung over her arm. A voiceover begins to play.

" _You might remember me from TV already last year, when I…well, you know. That was probably the hardest thing I had to do in my life._

_"It's one thing to fall in love so fast, and get your heart broken because the man you love is in love with someone…but I think it doubly sucks when the girl he's in love with is actually one of your best mates. And it triply sucks when you had to do all that on national television."_

In the distance, the studio audience gives a sympathetic "aww" in response.

Cut to Rey, sitting on a living room couch next to her father. The audience in the studio immediately recognizes him, and they give a huge cheer when he comes on screen.

Rey's father clears his throat, scratching his head. He speaks with the same familiar London dialect. "When Cassian came around that first time, during hometown dates, asking for my blessing…you might remember I was not so happy about it. I'd known the bloke, what, five minutes?" He shares a look with Rey, and Rey laughs.

"Aw, come on, dad."

"And I was right! I knew I was right to be suspicious," her dad insists, crossing his arms. He turns to the camera, his mouth pressed in a thin, flat line. "He wanted my blessing for, what? On the off-chance that he _might_ propose to you, as opposed to the other girls he had lined up for him? No way."

Snoke's voiceover fills the screen. " _A few months ago, Rey's father became an instant_ _Entourage Nation fan favorite when he went viral for his refusal to give Cassian his blessing._ "

Cut to a clip of Rey's father, standing over Cassian Andor. His face is mottled with color, and spittle flies through the air. "You want to—?—I just—now, lad, I'm sure you're a perfectly nice gent—I can't—you have how many women left?—I don't care —you _just_ walked in—how can you—?—I'm not sure I understand—this is—now, listen here—if a duck walked into a restaurant, and he told the waiter he wanted to order a coke—the waiter might say to him, 'Blimey, you're a duck! How can you talk?'—and the duck would say, 'Well, sir, I just got back from Duck University'—but say, maybe, that the waiter is not impressed by this—"

The camera cuts to Cassian's face, zooming in slowly as he starts to look increasingly more uncomfortable the longer Rey's father speaks. Epic instrumental music slowly swells in the background, growing louder and louder, the energy changing to something sharp and shrill…and on a particularly frenzied, high-pitched note, the music fades out just for Rey's father to get in one last thing…

"—no, I just, I can't. No."

Complete and utter silence.

"Well." That's Cassian, trying very hard to maintain eye contact with Rey's father as he fidgets with the hem of his sleeve uncomfortably. "Okay then."

The clip ends, and the studio audience is riotous with laughter. Loud whoops and hollers ripple across the room, and there are even large signs with Rey's father's face pasted on it that the camera zooms in on.

"Mr. Johnson, ladies and gentlemen!" Snoke finishes, joining the applause with a flourish of his hands. As the clapping dies down again, he folds his hands together and resumes on a more serious note.

"Rey's journey through _The Groom_ was particularly emotional, because as you'll remember, she never expected to be here at all."

More clips begin to roll on the screen behind Snoke's head.

"Love on TV? No way," Rey chortles, delicately lifting the hem of her evening gown as she crosses the lawn outside. The camera following her bobs up and down, trying to keep up with her movements. "I think I'm going home the first night. I'm very plain-looking, you know. Not cut out for TV." To prove her point, she smiles a toothy, chipmunk grin at the camera with her hands thrown up in a victory sign.

Cut to Rey, getting out of the limo. Her stiletto comes out first, just the way they all do, and then the rest of her body follows. She's just finished smoothing down the silhouette of her dress, when she looks up and happens to make eye contact with him. The Groom.

"Oh, no," she says, loud and clear enough for the mic, and she immediately stuffs half of herself back into the car door. "He's _hot_ ," she hisses to the girl that had been sitting next to her in the limo, reaching out and clutching her hands like a lifeline. The downward camera angle of this exchange is awkward, clearly not prepared to film this.

Jyn Erso is stunned, and then she can't stop laughing, tears squeezing out of her eyes. "Shut _up!_ " she breathes, trying hard to control herself. "I can't believe you just did that. He's standing right there, you idiot, get back out there!"

Cut to Rey, getting out of the limo again. Take two.

Cassian Andor looks plenty amused. "Hello," he says, by the time she's finally made her way up to him. "Are you sure this time?"

"Oh yeah, definitely," Rey tells him reassuringly. "I just had to prepare the next girl for that fancy suit you're wearing."

"Oh? I'm glad you like it." Cassian smiles down at her, taking her hand and pressing a kiss to the back. She gazes up at him through her lashes, her own smile resplendent.

Cut to Rey, getting the First Impression Rose. He pulls her aside to give it to her, and she makes eye contact with Jyn Erso when he's leading her away, mouthing screaming noises.

Cut to Rey, on her first one-on-one with Cassian. They're enjoying a romantic dinner on a private boat, and they're both cackling like idiots. When the mirth begins to die down, he leans in and presses a soft, unexpected kiss on her lips.

Her shock feels palpable through the screen.

Cut to Rey, sitting in the video confessional room. "I can't believe I'm saying this…but I actually think…I actually think I'm starting to fall in love with Cassian." Pause. "Is that, you know, weird to say? This sounds so...it sounds fake, right?" She laughs, a little in disbelief.

Cut to Rey, on a group date with Cassian and the other girls. She dominates the obstacle course and gives a holler of joy, rushing over to Cassian when she wins and flying into his arms for a victory kiss.

Cut to Rey, on another one-on-one with Cassian. They enjoy a private concert together at the end of the date, and she sits in the video confessional room again later that night. "He's so…wonderful. It doesn't feel real. Is it…okay for me to enjoy this so much?" She twists her earring uncertainly, making eye contact with someone behind the camera.

Cut to Rey, making it to hometown dates. She introduces him to her mother and father, and the camera makes it a point to zoom in on her father, the muscle under his eye giving a slight jump when he sees him.

Cut to Rey, giving another video confessional. "Okay, so Dad told me he didn't give Cassian his blessing. He chickened out on the spot, said it didn't feel right." Rey shakes her head. "Am I upset? Actually, no, this is about what I expected. Dad's all about traditional dating." Pause. "Am I a little worried that this might affect my chances of moving on? Maybe. But…I trust what we have."

Cut to Rey, getting the final rose in the next rose ceremony, beating out another girl whose father had actually given his blessing. She smiles up softly at Cassian when she accepts her rose, and he smiles back.

Cut to Rey, standing onstage at the last rose ceremony. She's outfitted in a stunning silver dress, her makeup soft and romantic. Her hands are joined with Jyn Erso, their fingers laced together as they wait for Cassian's final decision.

"Jyn."

Rey's head snaps up, her eyes wide and uncomprehending.

The presence at Rey's side slowly leaves her, the clack-clack-clacking of her heels marking her distance. The camera doesn't pull away from Rey's face. "Jyn, will you accept this rose?"

Rey doesn't wait to hear Jyn's answer. She immediately takes off down the steps, tears in her eyes as the camera doggedly follows her.

The clip softly ends, and the audience is in hushed silence.

Snoke strolls across the stage, shaking his head. "Poor Rey was heartbroken. Cassian had blindsided her."

Another clip plays behind him. Rey, sitting down for a video confessional.

Her face is makeup-free, her nose looks pink, she's dressed in an oversized gray sweatshirt, and her hair is pulled back in an untidy bun. "So, uh." Her sleeve covers most of her face, and she removes it and smiles flatly at the camera. "I got asked to be the next Bride." Rey gives a watery laugh. "I guess? I think it might...it might be good." She takes a deep breath. "I'm gonna do it."

Loud cheers and a smattering of applause swells from the audience in the studio.

Cut to Rey, more put together this time. She's in the bohemian dress again, sitting in a coffee shop by herself. She takes a slow sip from her drink. A voiceover plays as Rey glances out the window next to her.

" _I'm gonna be honest here. I didn't believe in this journey at first. It just didn't seem possible to fall in love after only a few weeks, and know at the end, for sure, that you wanted to marry them. Forever. You know? But maybe…_ " Pause. " _Maybe there was something in me that wanted that happy ending more than I realized. Why else would I be here?"_

Cut to Rey, in a crisp pantsuit as she sorts through paperwork in a conference room meeting. She looks up and addresses the room inaudibly as the voiceover continues.

 _"I want to find someone that complements the life I've built for myself. I'm an attorney at an environmental law firm, and I'm extremely motivated by my work. I've worked my butt off to get to this point. I think five-year-old Rey would be bloody proud of who I am right now_."

Cut to Rey, dancing in a bar with friends. _"But I also want someone who knows how to have fun. I think I'm a funny girl, and I would love to find someone who can appreciate that about me."_

Cut to Rey, walking slowly in her bohemian dress against the backdrop of a sun sinking below the city skyline. _"I just want to know that I'm not completely unlovable. That I have a chance at a normal life like everyone else. I'm ready to find my husband, you know?_ "

The clip fades away, and Snoke makes his way back across the stage. The audience slowly starts to applaud, growing louder and louder until there is only the sound of whistling and clapping.

"Oh, Rey. Of course you're lovable," Snoke tuts. "And I'm sure you're going to find what you're looking for this time…on the most _dramatic_ season of _The Bride_ ever!"

More stomping, cheering, and hollering.

"Let's meet the contestants, shall we?"

Behind him, the screen begins to play the intro videos from each contestant. There are thirty men in total…

POE 30  
PILOT  
CHICAGO, IL

A picture of a man flashes on the screen, dark and handsome. He smiles broadly at the camera, standing against the backdrop of a small plane. "Hey! I'm Poe, and I'm a pilot." He throws out a wide gesture to the runway around him.

Cut to Poe, cooking in the kitchen. "I'm a proud Guatemalan-American. My mother is from Guatemala, and my father is from Cuba." He nods to the short, happy woman beside him, rolling out dough on the table.

Cut to Poe, sitting on the couch. "I would definitely say that being a Guatemalan-American has been a big influence in my life. It shaped how others look at me, and it also shapes how I look at myself."

Cut back to Poe in the kitchen. "I'm always cooking food with my mom. We love to make _pupusas_ together." The camera zooms in on the bowl in his hands, and then it pans to the kitchen table where his mother sits. She beams at him, pink and radiant. "I'm so proud of you," his mother tells him. "You're going to sweep this Bride off her feet!"

"Oh, Mom," Poe laughs, mixing the bowl. "We'll have to see! There'll be a lot of other men."

"None as charming as you, my Poe," she says fondly, patting him on the cheek.

Poe drops a quick kiss on her cheek. "Thanks, ma."

Cut back to Poe on the runway, in his crisp pilot uniform. "I can't wait to meet Rey. She was stunning on _The Groom_ , and I think Andor was a fool." He shrugs. "But hey, his loss, my gain, right?" He turns on his heel and walks to the side of the plane, staring off in the distance. His voiceover fills the screen as he gazes pensively at the horizon.

" _I know what you're thinking. Am I intimidated that her ex was also a pilot? Well, I mean, yeah. Maybe a little. I don't know if that's going to work in my favor or if it's going to work against me. I guess we'll have to see!_ "

FINN 26  
ENTREPRENEUR  
ANN ARBOR, MI

"He-llooo." Pearly whites flash at the screen, and then the figure in front of the camera backs up. An attractive black man comes into focus, and he raises a hand in greeting. "The name's Finn. I'm 26 years old, and I'm from Ann Arbor!"

Cut to Finn, moving the computer mouse at his desk in a clean, sleek office space. He's talking to a woman over his shoulder, and they're speaking indistinctively as a voiceover cuts in.

" _I'm an entrepreneur. I have a lot of things going on right now—a lot of projects—but my main thing these days is my start-up company, FEED-em."_

Cut to a big, lime-green sign with white text hanging in the office.

" _That's F-E-E-D, all caps, a hyphen, and then lowercase E-M. Get it? It sounds like 'freedom'."_

Cut to Finn sitting in his office, relaxed and talking directly to the camera. "FEED-em is very near and dear to my heart. So what it is, is an app that targets restaurant food waste in densely populated cities. For now, we're just in Ann Arbor—but the plan is to ultimately expand to major cities across America.

"FEED-em connects customers to restaurants up to an hour before they close, in exchange for meal discounts between sixty to eighty percent off. Customers can enter their location and explore nearby deals on the app, and they pick up their food at a specified time," Finn explains.

Cut to Finn inside a house, sitting on a couch in the living room. An elderly woman is next to him, resting her weight against a cane. "This woman right here? She means the world to me," Finn says, wrapping an arm around her and squeezing tightly.

"That's Nana to you." The woman harrumphs, and then she looks squarely at the camera. "You treat my boy right, you hear, Rey? This man is a good one."

" _Nana_ ," Finn complains. He glances beyond the camera's line of vision, slightly embarrassed. He mumbles something inaudible to her, and another voiceover starts.

" _My grandmother is the most important person in my life. My parents passed away when I was five years old. Nana raised me all by herself, and she's done a pretty darn good job, if you ask me."_

Cut to Finn, picking up a framed family photo somewhere in his house.

" _It_ is _hard sometimes, because there are days where I think I don't remember what my parents even looked like anymore. I'm glad I still have photos of them like this, to help me remember._ "

Cut to Finn, sitting outside on a big white wraparound porch as he stares at the suburban life around him.

 _"I do think it would be nice for me to find my wife on_ The Bride _. Nana's been pestering me about bringing someone home for ages, and I kind of fell in love with Rey when I saw her on_ The Groom _. Honestly? I have a really good feeling about her._ "

HUX 28  
ORTHODONTIST  
ATLANTA, GA

"Armitage Hux, how do you do?" The voice has a slight Southern drawl, and the camera zooms to show a ginger-haired man as he tips a wide-brimmed hat. He has perfectly straight teeth and a bright smile.

Cut to Hux, trotting a horse along a farm. There's the silhouette of a red barn in the background. " _Most of my pals just call me Hux. I currently live in Atlanta, Georgia, but I grew up in Valdosta. That's where my folks live. I'm a good ol' country boy at heart_."

Cut to Hux, making his way through fields of long grass. "I love being outside. I don't think I could do without the fresh air. City life is nice, but nothing beats this," he tells the cameras. The next shot is of him, leaning against the wide trunk of a tree.

Cut to Hux, in a white medical coat as he pulls on blue latex gloves. He swivels in a chair, and the camera pans to the patient in the chair next to him. Hux gestures for the patient to open his mouth as a voiceover fills the screen.

" _By day, I'm your local orthodontist. I run a practice in Atlanta, and I do a lot of cosmetic work. I take my work very seriously. It's always nice to see a happy patient at the end of everything_."

Cut to Hux, sitting at a dinner table with a very large family. There is a huge spread of food on the table, with roast chicken, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, casseroles, and deviled eggs. Their heads are all bowed in prayer, and the woman at the head of the table is finishing up as the audio fades in. "…amen," she intones, and everyone around the table choruses the sentiment.

"Amen."

"Now, I'll start," the woman at the front says. She has bright, familiar red hair, and she tilts her face to Hux. "Honey, you know we love you, and as your mother, I couldn't be prouder that you're taking on this wonderful journey."

"Thanks, ma," Hux beams proudly. "It means a lot to me that y'all are all here to support me in this."

"Of course we're here for you, son," a red-haired man says gruffly, puffing out his chest with pride. "The Bride is gonna love you."

"Does that mean you're getting married?" a ginger-haired little girl suddenly cuts in. "Can I be the flower girl at your wedding?"

The whole table laughs, and the family continues to converse inaudibly as another voiceover begins.

" _I 100% think I could find my wife in Rey. She's a charming lady, and she's British to boot. If that doesn't scream classy, I don't know what does. I think she'd be a perfect addition to the family. My folks would love her._ "

KYLO 29  
ACTOR  
NEW YORK CITY, NY

A man flashes onto the screen, pasty-skinned and shirtless, doing squats with a barbell over his shoulders. His veined muscles pulse every time he goes down, and he grunts in rhythm to the movement. A voiceover starts over the visual.

" _Hey. I'm Kylo. Kylo Ren. You can usually find me at the gym. I like to stay fit._ " The camera lingers on his workout routine for a few moments longer.

Cut to Kylo, sitting on a bench, presumably still at the gym. There are people moving in the background behind him as he speaks. "I'm a working actor in New York City. Most people think actors have an easy job, but the truth is, there's a lot of discipline behind it all. You always have to make sure you're in shape."

Cut to a TV screen playing a movie. There is a couple arguing on the screen. After a few moments, it becomes apparent that one of the actors is Kylo.

The camera pans over a few inches until the back of the real Kylo's head is in frame. The real Kylo turns to face the camera. "You might know me from the movie _Wedding Book_. It's my most successful film to date." Pause. "It's all been mostly indie films, but I'm working on it."

Cut to Kylo, sitting on a living room couch. "The Bride? Uh, yeah, she seems cool." He swallows, and then he rubs the back of his neck. "I don't really watch reality TV. I've never watched a single season of…any of it. _The Groom_. _The Bride_. Yeah, none of it."

Cut to a rooftop view of the city skyline. Kylo stands at the railing, the wind blowing through his dark hair. A voiceover briefly plays.

" _Yeah, I think it would be nice to find my wife out of this. I don't really…date much. I think my mother considers it her greatest personal failure. We'll see how it goes._ "

After all thirty videos have played, the audience is wild with reactions to the men. Snoke is sitting on an armchair on stage, and he folds his hands together.

"So what do we think?" he asks, his eyes shining. "How are the men?"

The crowd bursts into responses, screaming out their favorites.

"Let's take a look at social media," Snoke suggests. He turns behind him, and tweets fill the screen.

The Bride @TheBrideFOBC  
How do you feel about the men? Tweet us your reactions! 👀 #TheBride

liz @daytonagirl77  
@TheBrideFOBC  
me when i saw Poe:  
[GIF of a middle-aged woman downing a drink and fanning herself]

P T @PT76482718  
@TheBrideFOBC  
I'm so pleasantly surprised by Finn?? #BlackExcellence

Ria @riajanelle  
Replying to @PT76482718  
I swear I'm gonna end up watching this season entirely for him however long he lasts…#EntourageSoWhite

The Bride Addict @TheBride_Addict  
#TheBride producers knowing they had a pilot quota to fill this season:  
[GIF of Snoke laughing and rubbing his hands together]

Lauren @beachbabe10  
@TheBrideFOBC  
yooo who tf is Kylo Ren and why does he make my skin crawl?? #TheBride

andy @andreamarier0se  
Replying to @beachbabe10  
RIGHT? total douchebag alert! #TheBride

Grace Po @gracethechicken  
Replying to @beachbabe10  
excuse me #TeamKylo #TheBride  
[GIF of woman sobbing hysterically, angrily pointing a finger at someone]

Snoke pauses for dramatic effect, turning back to the audience. "Okay, so it looks like we have a mixed bag," he says.

More laughter.

"More importantly…are you ready for _Rey_ to meet the men?" Snoke asks lightly.

The audience screams its answer, and with a slow smile, Snoke folds his hands and gestures to the screen. "Let's see how Rey is doing, then."

An image of Rey fills the screen…

Rey emerges from the limousine, dressed in a form-fitting red evening gown.

Her dress has a modest halter neckline, but the mermaid silhouette leaves nothing to the imagination. She wears simple diamond drop earrings, which had cost her a small fortune from her savings. (Hey, she didn't choose environmental law to pay her bills, that was for bloody sure.)

She thinks she looks killer.

Rey knows the cameras are trained on her, but by this point, they are a familiar, friendly presence. She makes her way to the front of the mansion, letting her eyes fall on the sprawling structure that defined her life for the past year.

Here is where she made friends for life.

Here is where her heart was broken.

Here is where her future husband will be.

Ironic, isn't it? But that's just the way it's always been. Rey knows that this is exactly the kind of drama First Order Broadcasting Company thrives off of. She just didn't think it was something that would happen to her.

Rey has never been a pageant girl. She learned how to bevel for photos for the first time in her freshman year of college, when her roommate told her point-blank that she had amazing legs but damn if she wasn't using them all wrong.

She knows that a pageantry pedigree is to the Bride like a college football career is to the Groom, but she wasn't trying to be the next Bride when she first started. Honestly, she had just gone on _The Groom_ because of alcohol and poor decision-making skills, and because she'd liked the look of the Groom when they announced him as their next star. He had been her favorite when he had been competing for the heart of the Bride, but honestly, that was nothing new.

He had been everyone's favorite.

That was why he became the Groom.

And that's the other thing that boggles Rey's mind. More important than a pageantry pedigree, First Order Broadcasting Company takes into consideration fan favoritism. It doesn't matter if the girl has never competed in a pageant in her life, like Rey, or if the guy doesn't know his way from a fumble to a turnover—if they're _popular_.

And that means, somehow, Rey's popularity had beat out every pageant girl hopeful that she had competed against on her season of _The Groom_.

Rey isn't really sure what to make of that.

She doesn't think she did anything particularly special. She loved, she cried, she lost. Is that all it takes to win people over? Rey knows that she does really stupid things sometimes, things that Rose is always telling her _you can't just do that_ in an exasperated tone. Like in college, when she wore six-inch platform heels for a high media coverage event, despite never having gone beyond two inch kitten heels before that.

Yes, she fell flat on her face.

Yes, Rose told her _I told you so_.

Rey stops at the entrance to the house. It was a strange thought, to think that this might be how she was going to meet her future spouse. But Rey barely has time to reflect on that before, lo and behold, the host appears.

"Snoke!" she exclaims.

The elderly man comes over to her and envelops her in a warm hug.

"Rey," Snoke greets, clasping her hands. "How do you feel, dear?"

"Nervous. I feel nervous," Rey admits, fanning herself lightly. "But ready. I can't wait to meet everyone."

"Of course, of course. Before I leave you to it, I have to ask: what's the one thing you think you're looking for tonight?"

"Well…genuineness. Honesty. I want to make sure whoever I'm looking for is here for the right reasons, and they're ready for the possibility of settling down with me at the end of this," Rey says firmly. "It would really suck to make it all the way to the end and have my heart broken all over again."

"Absolutely. If there's anyone who deserves love at the end of all of this, it most certainly is you," Snoke tells her gently. "Are you ready to meet the men?"

"I've been waiting all day, Snoke," Rey jokes, bouncing up and down on her the balls of her feet. "Don't leave me hanging."

"Here we go," Snoke says, gesturing to a sleek, black limo pulling up the driveway. The cameras focus on the vehicle, and the host quietly withdraws from the scene.

Rey takes a deep breath, her eyes glued to the limo as it slows to a complete stop. The car door opens, and then a leather shoe sticks out, followed by a leg, and then the man himself.

Wow.

Bloody hell. They really pulled out all the stops, didn't they?

Her heart is pounding wildly as the attractive man makes her way to him, square-jawed and smoldering eyes. He's exactly the brand of tall, dark, and handsome that she's always found herself attracted to.

Shit, shit, shit.

He was _hot_. Cassian who?

He stops in front of her, and her eyes haven't left his since the moment he got out of the car. She lets out a small breath that she didn't know she had been holding.

"Hey." His voice is deep, wooden and smoky. "I'm Poe."

"Poe! How nice to meet you," Rey says hurriedly, desperate to cover up her lack of initial greeting. "I'm Rey." She reaches out to take his hand, but Poe clasps her hand in his own hands first, and he presses a soft kiss to the back.

Rey is deeply charmed, but she still isn't prepared for when he speaks again.

" _El día que me quieras tendrá más luz que junio. La noche que me quieras será de plenilunio_ ," Poe says, serious and solemn.

"Oh, wow."

"Do you understand Spanish?" He breaks out into a grin.

"A little." Rey was an attorney, so knowing at least some Spanish was a requirement. "Let's see…you said, the day I love you…?"

"The day you love me will have more light than June. The night you love me will be a full moon," Poe translates smoothly.

"Wow. That's beautiful." She meant it, too.

"It's from one of my favorite poems."

They smile at each other, and Rey feels like she looks ridiculous, but she doesn't care.

"I'll see you inside, Rey?" Poe asks, his fingers sliding away from her hand.

"Absolutely," she promises.

Rey is still watching him when he disappears inside the mansion. "Holy shite," she says bluntly, and she turns on her heel, fanning herself. She makes eye contact with the cameraman closest to her. "He's incredible," she mouths. "Wow. I have such a good feeling about tonight."

The next man out of the limo does not disappoint, either. He's dark and good-looking, dressed in a navy blue suit, and he comes up to her with a can of coke in his hands.

"Hello, who're you?" Rey says, grinning from ear to ear because she already has such a nice vibe from him. She can tell she's going to like him.

"The name's Finn. This is for your dad," he says, presenting the coke to her with a flourish.

"Why, thank you." Rey takes the can from him. "Why is this for my dad?"

"Well, I already have a coke, so I won't need to order one from a restaurant. And for the record, I've never been a fan of ducks." Finn smiles down at her.

They both break out into laughter at the same time.

Rey used to be utterly mortified by her dad's monologue when she first heard it on air, but after months of memes on social media, it had simply become a fact of her brand. Rey even suspects it's part of the reason why people like her so much. "What about me?" Rey teases him.

"For _you_ …I have something a little nicer than a coke." Finn reaches inside his jacket and produces a small square wrapper.

"Oh, no," Rey gasps. "Is that—"

"You were robbed last season, Rey. If I may?" Finn asks. He's opened the wrapper, and now he has the blue Ring Pop in his hand.

"You may," she says dramatically, presenting her hand to him.

Finn slides the candy ring over her finger, and they admire it together. "A perfect fit," he announces.

"Stunning," Rey agrees. She reaches up on her tiptoes and plants a soft kiss on his cheek. "Thank you, Finn. I love it."

"Any time. I'll see you inside?"

"I'll come find you," Rey assures him, and he makes his way into the mansion. She holds her Ring Pop up to the light, letting the glow filter in through the translucency of the hard candy.

"That was delightful. What a charmer," Rey tells the camera, still smiling.

She does not have the same easy feelings about the next man out of the car.

When he gets out of the limo, Rey is immediately struck by the look of him, and she can’t help but suck in a sharp breath. Not in the way she did for Poe, and not even in the way that she finds him attractive.

He's not really quite that. There's something very intimidating about him, from his strong hooked nose to the angry set of his jaw. His pale coloring contrasts strongly against his longer, dark hair, and it makes him look almost—well, if she's being honest with herself, _vampiric._

It doesn’t help that he's wearing black on black on black. A black tie against a black shirt with a black jacket. It makes him look more severe than she suspects she would normally find him.

And at first, with that great distance between them, Rey thinks that he's accursed with a very unfortunate case of acne. But as he starts moving toward her, in long strides with his even longer legs—blimey, how tall _is_ he?—she realizes it. It's not acne at all. He has a smattering of dark freckles all over his face, like a burst of stars.

Rey's heart arrests suddenly. She's not sure why.

When he finally stops in front of her, he peers down at her in what she could only describe as an imperious manner. He wets his lips, and she follows the movement, unsure of what to make of him.

"Hey," he says curtly. "I'm Kylo."

"Hello, Kyle," Rey responds with false cheer. Her heart is hammering a mile a minute, for whatever reason. She tries to pull him in for an embrace. "I'm Rey."

He stops her suddenly, and she freezes, glancing into his eyes again.

"Kylo," he corrects, almost impatiently.

Oh. Rey feels her face growing hot. "Sorry. Kylo. That's a very unique name. How did your parents come up with it?" She tries to lean in again, and Rey catches a whiff of him—clean, the scent of pine—before he pulls away. Again.

She shoots him an awkward glance. Oh. Does he not want her touch him? Rey takes a few steps away from him, suddenly feeling self-conscious.

As she studies him, she is once again taken aback by the intense blackness of his eyes. This man isn't really attractive. Rey's quite sure of that. There's something so sharp about him, like he's a knife ready to cut at a moment's notice.

"They didn't," Kylo says woodenly. "I chose it."

She is instantly confused, and she searches his eyes for a few moments, waiting for him to elaborate. He doesn't. Kylo just blinks back at her, unmoving.

Well. Alright, then. Rey flashes another bright smile at him, and she reaches up to pat him good-bye—but she halts her errant hand just in time. Right. This is fine. Not awkward at all. Rey swallows a lump in her throat.

"Well, I'll see you inside then, Kylo," she says cheerfully, mostly for the camera's benefit. The words sound false even to her own ears. She's quite sure she wants nothing to do with this man once she's inside the mansion with twenty-something other men.

She gestures broadly toward the mansion, since she's sure at this point that he won't let her touch him. She is so focused on getting rid of him that she doesn't notice how his eyes linger briefly on her hand at her side. Blessedly, he turns and walks away soon enough.

Rey watches him stalk off toward the house. _He named himself Kylo?_ He already had the Count Dracula thing going on for him. She's not entirely sure he needed the name to match.

She lets out a deep breath when he disappears inside. On Tinder, she would've swiped left on him in a heartbeat.

The rest of the men are less unnerving. Their names become a blur in her mind after a while, despite Rey's best efforts to remember all of them.

There was Tritt, 32, a marketing analyst from Roanoke, Virginia.

Mitaka, 26, a psychotherapist from Houston, Texas. (Mitaka was actually his last name, but he introduced himself that way.)

Rumi, 27, a financial advisor from Washington, D.C.

Meeting thirty men all in one night was an exhausting affair, and Rey isn't sure that she would recommend the experience to anyone. Ever.

She can't believe she's supposed to be dating all of them now.

Or at least, until she eliminates some of them in the first rose ceremony tonight. Rey is able to immediately single out a few men, just from their limousine arrival, that she would never be interested in.

She files those names away for later, when she'll be sitting down with the producers to begin discussing elimination.

For now, Rey finally makes her way inside the _Entourage_ mansion to greet the men.

They're all gathered together in the living room, some sitting in chairs or on the couch, some standing, milling near the fireplace with glass tumblers in hand.

The cameras eagerly follow her, the volume of conversation in the room immediately falling away when she makes her appearance in the doorway. The men give her appreciative cheers and whistles, calling out her name in a staggered chorus as they shuffle around to stand up.

"Hello, everyone," Rey says with a big smile, glancing around the room as she makes eye contact with a few of the men. "How are we feeling tonight?"

A few murmured responses of "good" or "great" go around before one of the suitors, perhaps a little more drunk than the rest, slurs, " _Better_ , now that you're here!" And he smacks his hands together to loudly start clapping, prompting the rest of the men to also burst into applause.

Rey ducks her head, slightly embarrassed. She's not used to attention, but now is a good as time as any to start becoming accustomed to it. "You all look so handsome tonight," she says with a smile, gesturing to all the suits in the room. "You've really pulled out all the stops tonight, and some of you have literally swept me off my feet."

That was true. Ingo, 24, got out of the limo and opted for a bridal carry when they exchanged greetings.

"First off, I wanna say thank you. I'm so grateful that you're all here. It means so much to me that you all took time out of your busy schedules to come all the way out here, and I promise I won't let you down. I'm so excited to begin this journey with all of you.

"I know that there are probably a lot of emotions right now, and this experience can seem daunting and maybe overwhelming at times. Trust me, I understand. I know how you're feeling. It wasn't so long ago that I was in your shoes. I even know that some people have been saying that maybe my heart isn't ready for tonight. Well, I'm here, standing in front of all of you now, to let you know that I _am_ ready for this.

"I am ready to find love again, and I am extremely hopeful that my future husband is standing in this room right now." Rey chances another look around the room, studying a few people discreetly. Poe is standing by the fireplace, his arm slung over a fellow contestant as he listens to her, nodding vigorously. Rumi is closer to the wall, on the opposite side of the room. Her eyes find Finn's near the sofa, and he gives her a wide grin when he notices her looking at him.

As Rey pulls her gaze away, finishing her sweep of the room, her eyes catch on a presence studying her just as carefully in her peripheral vision. Startled, she glances over, and she sees it.

Well, she sees him.

The vampire guy. Kylo.

 _Shit_.

She peels her eyes away as fast as she can, heart thrumming in her chest again. She's not sure why he scares her. He looks unnervingly big, compared to the rest of the guys in the room. She hadn't noticed it before, but he stands at least a head taller than everyone else.

"It's so crazy to say," Rey says, continuing her speech. "But I honestly do think it's possible, after meeting all of you tonight.

"The only thing I'm going to ask from all of you, is that you stay true to who you are, and just be yourself. I'm the kind of girl who keeps it real, so I'll always be open and honest with everything I do, and I hope that you can do the same for me," she tells them.

"So, with that being said—" Rey raises her champagne flute into the air.

The rest of the men follow her lead, a cluster of glasses in the center of the room.

"Raise your glass," she smiles, "to the start of something wonderful. To new beginnings, new chances, and falling in love. Cheers!"

"Cheers!" The room choruses, clinking their glasses together with hers.

Rey takes a generous sip of her drink, and she's just swallowed it down when she feels a presence at her side. She glances up, and it's Finn, offering his arm to her.

"Hello, you," he greets her.

"Finn!" Rey smiles.

"Can I take you outside for a second?"

"Absolutely," she tells him, slipping her hand through his arm.

"Let's go," Finn says, and he leads her away.

Silence.

The camera lingers on the empty doorway where Rey had just been, and then pans around the room, zooming in on different men as they stare at the door.

"Damn. I guess it's really started," someone finally says.

The room groans, and people break away from their stiff poses during the toast. "Yeah, I was wondering who _that guy_ was gonna be," another man says. "You know, the one who grabs her first."

"I wanted it to be me," a dark-haired man comments wryly. "But I was too far away."

"Man, I didn't think about it—but yeah, I should've sat closer to the door. Maybe on the couch?"

"Nah, the couches were already full by the time I got here. I guess you just had to keep your fingers crossed that your limo came first."

"Who's in charge of that, anyway? Who _decides_ your limo comes first?"

"I wonder if that guy is gonna get the First Impression Rose now because he got her first."

"That's usually how it goes, isn't it? There are too many men, so you're basically guaranteed a good first impression if you manage to get her first."

"Yeah, I think there are probably going to be some of us who won't even get the chance to speak to her by the time the night is over."

"Don't say that, man. I don't want to think about it!"

"It's really not that big of a deal," a voice says from the corner of the room.

There's a pause in conversation, and then everyone turns to look at who had spoken.

The camera zooms in on him.

It's the black-haired man, the one who had been a little too tall and a little too big for people to rub elbows with earlier when everyone was making small talk during limo arrivals.

He's swirling the whiskey in his glass, not making eye contact with anyone else. When he notices that people are staring, he finally looks up, and his own stare feels like a disturbing weight in the room.

The silence stretches into seconds, the rest of the men unsure of what to make of his comment.

Finally, the dark-haired man comes forward, offering a friendly smile. "Hey, I'm Poe." He sticks out his hand, but the taller man simply looks at it, not moving.

"Kylo."

"O-kay then." Poe retracts his arm, and then he claps Kylo on the back good-naturedly. "So, what's your deal? Where're you from, man? You were pretty quiet earlier."

Kylo slaps him away in a sharp, aggressive movement. "Don't touch me."

Poe looks thrown. He slowly stares at the offending hand, and then back to Kylo. "Whoa, man. Take it easy."

* * *

For audiences watching _The Bride_ at home on their television screens, the camera suddenly cuts away to a video confessional of Poe. The bottom of the screen reads "POE, 30. PILOT. CHICAGO, IL" as a friendly reminder.

Poe looks directly at the camera. "Yeah, that was wild. I was just trying to be friendly."

* * *

"You can stay over there while you talk to me, okay?" Kylo says forcefully, pointing to a spot in the room at least ten feet away.

* * *

Cut to video confessional of Kylo. He's looking down at his hands, and then he lets out an angry breath and makes eye contact with someone behind the camera. "I don't like people."

* * *

Poe's eyes follow the direction he points in, and then he barks out a laugh. "Okay. Okay." He throws his hands up in surrender. "My bad, my guy. You can brood all night by yourself, how 'bout that?" He flashes an indulgent smile.

Kylo works his jaw carefully, clearly catching his tone and not liking it. He finishes off his drink, and when he slams the glass down on the table closest to him, it shatters without warning.

All of the contestants around him jump. Kylo glances at his own hand, startled. When he looks up again, everyone around him is standing in shock.

* * *

The screen cuts away to a series of video confessionals, each playing in rapid succession:

"He just broke the [BLEEP]ing glass, man!"

"I mean, come on. Was that necessary?"

"Alert, alert. We found the crazy one in the house."

* * *

Cut to Kylo. A few seconds of heavy silence. "I didn't mean to break the glass."

* * *

"You know what, man?" Poe says, backing away slowly. "You're insane." He flashes some finger guns. "I’ll stay away."

Kylo's face darkens, and then he turns and storms out of the room without another word.

The men watch him leave, waiting uncertainly to see if anything else was going to happen next. After a few seconds of calm, they slowly crowd around the shattered glass in the middle of the floor.

"I can't believe he actually did that."

More silence.

"You think he's got anger management issues?"

"Does that— _uh_ , does that man have anger management issues? Did he just break a [BLEEP]ing glass over someone talking to him?" A man scoffs in response, shaking his head.

The camera zooms in on Poe, staring at the glass wordlessly.

* * *

Cut to video confessional of Poe. "Do I feel bad?" He pauses, considering. "Actually, yeah, I do. I don't know what I did to him. I really was just trying to be nice." Another pause. "But man, talk about an overreaction!"

* * *

Shortly afterward, Rey returns with Finn, and they're both laughing when they walk in.

But there's a heavy atmosphere hanging over the room, and Finn notices it right away.

"We're back. Did something happen?" Finn looks around cautiously.

"Actually…" A man says slowly, and he glances at Rey, unsure. Without another word, he jerks his thumb in the direction of the broken glass.

Rey catches sight of the glass for the first time since re-entering the living room. Her jaw drops open, and she is actually unable to speak for several moments. She approaches the mess, appalled. "What happened?"

She had been gone for five minutes, tops. Her head whips around the room, needing an explanation.

Her eyes land on Poe, who is strangely quiet. When he realizes that Rey is looking at him, he drops his gaze. Her suspicions skyrocket, and she clutches her dress tightly.

Someone else speaks up. "Poe over there tried to say hi to Kylo, and he freaked out. Broke a glass and everything, told him to stay away."

Rey's head snaps away from Poe. "What?"

"Kylo?" Finn scratches the back of his neck. "Who's Kylo again?"

Rey takes a deep, measured breath. She knows exactly who Kylo is.

"Super big guy, he was over there by himself earlier for a while. Tall, dark, and broody?"

"Oh, yeah!" Finn snaps his fingers in sudden recognition. "Yeah, I remember him." Pause. "Are you serious? He really broke a glass?"

"You need more proof?" Poe says flatly, gesturing to the glass. It's the first time he's spoken since Rey walked back in. She studies him, feeling bad for him. It's clear that he isn't pleased about this kind of attention.

Rey already knew it before, but now she feels a fire behind the thought.

Kylo has got to go.

"What do you mean, _Kylo can't go?_ " Rey exclaims in disbelief, staring at Snoke.

It's the end of the night, the end of the first cocktail party, and Rey is ready to present her final choices to Snoke for the rose ceremony.

Unfortunately, Snoke does not seem to be on the same page as Rey.

"Just what I said," Snoke says calmly, folding his hands. "I don't care what you do with the majority of them, but you have to keep Kylo."

"Why." Rey blinks at him.

"Because. I said so," Snoke tells her, almost kindly. He pats her hand. "Also, the rest of the contestants hate him. We hoped he would work out as an antagonist in the house, and he's already surpassed our expectations."

Rey groans, putting her face in her hands. She gets it. She really does. She had already suspected, as soon as he had gotten out of the limo, that the producers had probably cast him for his downright villain-like appearance. At the same time, _seriously_? He was the one person she had been looking forward to eliminating the _most_.

Rey had already played out the fantasy in her mind. She would pick up the last rose, after all the other roses had been handed out. Snoke would come in, and announce to the rest of the contestants: "Gentlemen. This is the final rose tonight." Rey would clear her throat. And she would say a name.

And it wouldn't be his name.

And she would revel in that feeling.

Now, Snoke is telling her she can't do that. _Bollocks._ Rey rubs her temples, feeling worn out. He didn't even talk to her all night.

And that, perhaps, was the greatest offense. No chance for a confrontation. No chance to watch him struggle to talk his way out. It was like he didn't really care to get to know her at all, or even pretend to try. _Why was he even here?_ Clearly not for her.

The thought doesn't mollify Rey at all. Most contestants with ulterior motives usually at least pretended to be interested in the Bride, or the Groom. He didn't even do that. Did he just _know_ she was going to have to keep him for this exact reason?

Thinking about him makes her angrier and angrier.

A memory rises in her mind, swift and unbidden. The First Impression Rose had been laid out on the table earlier in the night, and halfway through the cocktail party, Rey had swept into the living room and retrieved it.

She saw the hopeful glances around the room, the perked-up body language and held breaths. Rey felt a little bad when she quietly tried to withdraw from the room, searching for someone in particular.

She spotted who she was looking for from the window, and her eyes lit up. He was outside, lounging around near the pool and speaking to some friends. Rey lifted the hem of her dress and started walking slightly faster through the hall, hoping to avoid any more questioning glances before she reached him.

In hindsight, she's not really sure how she missed him.

All she knows is, in the next moment, she had collided with a very solid, rock-hard _thing_ , and she reeled back, startled, to see what happened.

 _Shit_.

She always thinks that when she sees him, for some reason.

Kylo Ren.

She had smacked him square in the chest. He stood in front of her, his entire body absolutely rigid with tension, and Rey suddenly remembered that he didn't like her touching him, and what just happened probably qualified as _touch_ of some sort.

She opened her mouth, because it's her instinct to say sorry about this kind of thing. But honestly? For the first time tonight, she realized that there were no cameras to capture this interaction—and bloody hell, she didn't have to be civil if he wasn't going to be either.

So Rey snapped her mouth shut, and they were still looking at each other. And at first his gaze was on her face, but then it flickered to something lower on her body. She stared at him stupidly for a few more moments before following what he was looking at, and she realized she was still clutching the First Impression Rose.

Rey blinked at him.

Then, picking up the hem of her dress again, she continued making her way to Poe.

She didn't look back.

The first rose ceremony goes off without a hitch.

Rey hands out the roses one by one, and she can feel the tension in the room building with each successive rose. Some of the rose-less contestants look like they're sweating bullets. She knows the feeling all too well. She hates being the one to make them feel that way, but it's one of the downsides to being the Bride.

After the twentieth rose, there is one rose left on the podium.

There are nine rose-less contestants.

Everyone stares at the remaining rose, waiting for Rey's decision.

Rey takes no pleasure in what she's about to do next. She plucks the rose by the stem, holds it close to her beating chest. Takes a deep breath.

"Kylo."

Heads snap around the room. There is complete and utter silence, and then slowly, the lumbering figure makes his way down to her.

Rey looks up at him, and of course he's looking back at her. His expression is stiff and unreadable.

"Kylo, will you accept this rose?" She hates saying the words, practically spits them out. She wonders if anyone will notice.

"Yes." Kylo's voice is deep, but the word is so soft she barely hears it.

Rey blinks several times, taken aback. It takes her a moment longer to register he had already answered her, and she was just standing there, unmoving. Like she didn't want to pin the rose to his lapel.

She mutters under her breath, embarrassed, and quickly works to remedy that. She pins the rose to his jacket, and then she steps back, giving him a tight smile.

"Alright."

And that concluded the first rose ceremony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, my name is Laura, and I'm a _The Bachelor_ addict. I started out watching it years ago as a joke, but the joke was on me. There's no way to watch the show without becoming invested. And yes, I have seriously considered competing on the show before (which is probably why I know way too much about it).
> 
> As you can see, I didn't end up competing on any seasons, but my cumulative knowledge of every season of _The Bachelor_ and _The Bachelorette_ has all led me up to this point: writing a Reylo reality TV AU. This one really _will_ be the most dramatic season of reality TV ever, so stay tuned. And to any other fellow Bachelor fans out there, you'll probably enjoy this the most!
> 
> Follow me on [tumblr](http://laurarobin.tumblr.com)!


	2. Week 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey goes on two group dates and a one-on-one date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HUGE thanks to [fulcrumstardust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fulcrumstardust/pseuds/fulcrumstardust) for making me this gorgeous-beyond-belief moodboard! I'm been swooning over it for days, and I couldn't wait to share it with the world.

The next morning is bright and beautiful when Rey wakes up in her private section of the _Entourage_ estate. The sky is streaked with gold, the sun is shining, and it's a perfect day for a date.

Or in Rey's case, a date with _ten_ men—all at once.

Not intimidating at all. Rey carefully blends her makeup foundation in the mirror, scrunching up her nose and wondering how crazy she looks on the cameras that she knows are trained on her. They told her they would be using this footage later, for a GRWM-style feeling with the Bride.

Does Rey feel comfortable with the cameras? That's a loaded, confusing question. The honest answer is, she barely notices them sometimes anymore. When she does, it mostly feels comforting, like she knows she's not alone in her journey.

Because she's not allowed to have her phone while she's filming this. No computers, no Internet access.

She has no contact with her friends or family, and it's only the second day and she feels sick with the need to reach out to them.

It was easier when she was competing on _The Groom_ , the no cell phone rule, because at least she had the other girls in the house to talk to and keep herself sane. Right now, all she has are the field producers, the crewmen, and Snoke, the host.

And she did talk to all of them last night quite a bit, often sitting down in the video confessional room to give her thoughts about different men, and how she felt about the big drama of the night.

But Rey is also keenly aware that above all else, the field producers aren't necessarily her friends. They're only here with her to create a season, and as far as they're concerned, that season had better be bloody interesting to watch.

So she doesn't have anything, really, no true confidante as long as she's here, and nothing to stave off the boredom. Just books, and the men that she's dating to keep her company. While that's not necessarily a bad thing, Rey already misses her friends and family back home.

She misses her parents, but she knows she'll see them again during hometown dates. Above all, she misses Rose, her best friend and roommate back in Ohio. She wishes that her friend could be here with her through this experience.

Rose hadn't been able to contain her excitement when Rey first got picked to be on _The Groom_ , but nothing compared to the moment she found out Rey was the next Bride.

She had let out a banshee shriek in one long, sustained note that sounded like bloody murder, and she kept bouncing up and down on their living room couch like she had won the lottery because _my best friend is the Bride, you motherfuckers_. She hugged Rey as tightly as she could, because Rey had suddenly started sobbing—from what, she didn't really know—and then she petted Rey's hair as she laid in her lap, and she told her, "It's gonna be okay, you goof, you're gonna be fine."

And then they celebrated with copious amounts of wine.

Rey appreciates having Rose in her life so much.

Sometimes, she questions her decision to trade the steady guidance Rose offered in her dating life for the cutthroat advice the field producers now offered her on a daily basis. Since the beginning on _The Groom_ , Rey constantly wrestled with the drama they created in the house, and even now, she questions whether they truly have her best interests in mind. She is only placated by the knowledge that at the end of the day, they're trying to tell a love story. And this time around, she _is_ the Bride.

They can't screw her over, not anymore.

Rey finishes her foundation and moves on to her brows, brushing them upward with a flick of her spoolie. When she is satisfied with her work, squinting at the mirror for good measure, she begins softly filling them in with hair-like strokes.

The other thing about the cameras—the number one thing that Rey learned from her last season on _The Groom_ —is that they don't always turn them off when you think they do.

The crew will act like they're turning them off, and you think you can relax and maybe say something you would never intend for all of America to know you said—but surprise, there was _another_ camera, off to the left, concealed from your line of vision and it captured exactly what you said, and it ends up being edited into the final episode.

Luckily for Rey, she's never said anything differently between knowing the cameras are on or off. Sure, she thinks mean and catty things sometimes, but she sees no reason to voice those things out loud.

Some other girls in the house did not fare as well.

She remembers Lusica, 24, from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who had been blindsided on social media when her comments about a fellow contestant's body odor had been included in the second episode. Even though she had a fairly drama-free journey while they were both in the house together, suddenly she was a meme sensation when a screenshot of her face scrunched up in a judgmental expression started making their rounds across the Internet.

She had also been crucified by critics, who did not think the meme was funny, but just found her remarks to be mean-spirited and a reflection of poor character. They celebrated loudly on Twitter when she was sent home in the third episode.

Despite having the cameras yet to burn her, Rey can't help feeling uncomfortable with the deception. It reminds her that, as much as she sometimes forgets it sometimes, the crew aren't exactly her friends, and neither is the camera.

So if all of that is true, why is Rey here?

It's another good question, probably just as loaded and confusing.

Rey is 26 years old now, and she can't shake the feeling that ever since she was a little girl, she had thought she'd be married and living out the rest of her life in wedded bliss long before she hit 30.

It was probably sad, and unfeminist, and damning, but no matter how far she tried to get past it, Rey couldn't escape the little girl who dreamed of her wedding day as the happiest day of her life. She wanted it so badly for herself, and that was probably how she got hooked onto watching _The Groom_ and _The Bride_ all the time.

Unfortunately, everyone she's ever dated has been sad and disappointing.

So of course there was appeal in the highly curated fantasy of _The Groom_ , in dating someone who was sure of himself, _employed_ , and ready to settle down.

Ready to commit, ready to date with the long-term goal of marriage.

It was so unlike all the terrible dating apps she'd experienced, Tinder, Bumble, OKCupid, happn, Coffee Meets Bagel…

Yes, she'd tried _very_ hard to find someone she could connect with.

She'd gone on dates with some of her matches, but in the end, all they ever turned out to be were one-night stands and fast relationships, and she was left feeling emptier and more hollow than before.

And as much as Cassian Andor had broken her heart, she really had fallen completely, utterly in love with him. She found that she could actually envision a future with him, and he was the closest she had ever gotten to achieving that girlhood fantasy.

So here she was, trying again.

Rey finishes off her makeup with a few spritzes of setting spray, fanning her face rapidly. She blinks at her reflection in the mirror, and then she strikes a silly pose in the mirror.

"Let's do the sodding thing," she declares to no one in particular.

The house is in a sleepy, grim mood.

It had been the men's first night in the mansion, and adjusting to sleeping in shared rooms was a novel experience to some and an unwelcome collegiate memory to others. Plus, everyone was just exhausted from the events of the first rose ceremony last night.

Fighting for the attention of one woman against twenty-nine other men is never easy, after all.

But in the wee hours of the morning, the _Entourage_ cameras and crew had loudly started shuffling inside and setting up shop, and even the men who had able to sleep through all _that_ were rudely awakened by producers who moseyed their way into the bedrooms and started waking up people themselves.

So now, here they all are, yawning and bleary-eyed, gathered in the middle of the living room on the couch.

They're not sure what's happening now, but apparently _something_ is supposed to, from the look of things. Except they've been waiting for a hot minute now, and most of the men are getting restless. Some are even grouchy from being unable to get to the coffee maker before their unwelcome awakening. And many of them are engaged in their own private, low-pitched conversations when Snoke finally appears in the doorway. With a sudden hush, the chatter evaporates, and the men fix their rapt attention on him.

"Gentlemen," Snoke says, throwing a wide gesture out to the room. "Welcome to the mansion!"

A polite smattering of applause, and the camera pans around the room, zooming in on some choice faces.

"Well? How was last night for everyone? What do you boys think of Rey so far?" The host asks.

"Unreal," Finn admits. "Rey is a gorgeous woman. She has the most beautiful, heart-stopping smile."

"Every time she smiles, it feels like the whole room gets brighter!" That's Dopheld Mitaka, 26, a psychotherapist from Houston, Texas.

"Yeah, man, it's like she's your very own ray of light," Ingo Salik jumps in, 24, a firefighter from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

"Whoa." Armitage Hux, 28, an orthodontist from Atlanta, GA, blinks at him. "That's kind of cheesy."

The room bursts into much-needed laughter.

"Buddy's not wrong, though," Poe says, swooping in. "She's extremely stunning. And she smells _so_ good—I mean, come on, I think we can all agree on that, if nothing else—when she leans in to hug you—"

More laughter from the room, everyone clapping each other on the backs and nodding in agreement.

"Of course, " Snoke says, smiling languidly. "Rey is smart, beautiful, driven, and extremely talented—everything you could ever want, and she's ready to find her true love with one of you. I hope everyone is here for the right reasons, and that their heart is as sincere as hers."

The camera swivels to the corner of the room, where Kylo is lurking, and zooms in on him for a brief moment before panning back to Snoke.

"Kylo?" Snoke says, tilting his head. "You're awfully quiet."

Silence stretches out to greet him. Heads turn to look at him, but Kylo just looks at him, slow and unblinking.

"What do you think of Rey?"

More uncomfortable silence. It gets to the point where several men start clearing their throats. Finally, after a heavy eternity…

"She's good."

The heads that weren't already craned to look at him now do, everyone in the room astonished at the flat tone of his unenthusiastic response. Poe's jaw actually unhinges open, which goes unnoticed by most of the room, but the cameras zoom in on him as he looks wildly back and forth between Snoke and Kylo.

A few more seconds of deliberate silence pass.

"Well, that settles that, then. The Bride is a very good woman, after all," Snoke says airily. "Are you boys ready to go?"

There is a delayed response, but eventually, there is a chorus of bright _yeah_ s as the rest of the contestants try to tear their attention away from the trainwreck.

"This week—two group dates, " the host tells them, ticking off each item on his fingers. "The first one-on-one date. Roses up for grabs on all the dates. Again, if you get a rose on a date, you're safe for the next rose ceremony.

"One-on-one dates, you get to spend one-on-one time with Rey. But if you don't get a rose on that date, you're headed home immediately." Snoke looks around the room, making sure they hear that part.

"First date card. I'll leave it with you gentlemen." He produces a thin card in his hands, drops it on the coffee table. He immediately begins backing away from the room. "Have a good week. I'll see you all at the next rose ceremony."

And then he's gone.

As soon as his silhouette disappears, some men are still shooting odd looks at the too-big figure off to the side of the room, but Hux reaches over two other men to snatch the card up. He jumps up, rolling back his shoulders, and he takes a dramatic pause as he opens the card.

He starts reading off names. "Masir."

"Yeahhh!" Clapping and hollering, and the cameras zoom in on Masir Trach, 31, an attorney from Dallas, Texas.

"Ingo."

More clapping, hooting.

"Erich." The camera lingers for a few extra seconds on the grin of Erich Datoo, 30, a senior inventory analyst from Rockford, Illinois.

"Thanisson."

"Tritt."

"Rody."

The names go on and on, and there are ten in total by the time Hux finishes. He peers at the script on the card. "Alright, it says…'Let's clean house. Rey.' "

There's a considering pause around the room, and then Ingo shrugs his shoulders. "Okay, okay. We got this, whatever that means."

"Clean house?" Masir elbows his friend jokingly. "I hope she's not trying to get rid of all of us."

Tritt Opan, 32, a marketing analyst from Roanoke, Virginia, shoots a pointed glance at the corner of the room. "If that's the case, maybe someone else should be on this date," he mutters to his neighbor, Hux, but he wears a mic strapped to his waist, so the camera zooms in on him anyway.

The person in question does not hear him, of course.

"Maybe she means…she wants us to clean a house?" Ingo offers, unsure.

"As a date?" Thanisson, a pasty-skinned man with blonde hair, deadpans. He's 24, a sales account executive from Santa Monica, California.

"I wouldn't rule it out," Erich shrugs, standing up. "You never know with these types of things."

There's some more small chatter after that, but eventually, the men all stand up and file out of the living room to get ready for the day. They shower, grab coffee, get dressed, and make themselves TV-appropriate for video confessionals. And if they don't really speak or even make eye contact with Kylo Ren at all during any part of it, well, the cameras are only too happy to aggressively zoom in on his seclusion.

Rey is surprised by how well the first group date goes.

She had never been on a group date in her life, and even if she had, she's pretty sure that the modern context of "group date" doesn't constitute…one woman dating ten men at once.

They all travel to a park nearby the _Entourage_ mansion, and when the men rush out to greet her, Rey takes great pleasure in introducing them to her special guests for the day: Ciena Ree and Thane Kyrell. The men give a loud cheer when they spot the couple emerging from behind Rey, most of them recognizing them immediately.

A few years ago, Ciena Ree had made _Entourage_ history when she was announced as the first black Bride to star on the show. Ultimately, Ciena and Thane emerged from her season as an Entourage Nation power couple, and one of the biggest successful love stories to come out of the franchise.

Rey lets Ciena and Thane give the men a pep talk, and together, they host an outdoors obstacle course with challenges that test the men on their efficiency in household chores—like washing the dishes, vacuuming the "trash", and changing the diapers of a baby doll.

It's all great fun, and Rey has a blast with the men. She also enjoys hearing input from the veteran _Entourage_ couple on each of the men as they make their way through the obstacle course. (Ciena only likes two of the men in this group, and she makes a wry comment that she highly suspects Rey's future husband is not here.)

The best part is, there is only a minimal amount of drama, mostly between Rody and Erich when they both accuse each other of cheating during one of the challenges, and the cameras make a great show of zooming in on their faces during the rest of the date. Rey suspects the field producers are taking it easy on her first go-around, which she appreciates.

She ends up giving the first group date rose to Ingo.

Later that week, Rey asks Dopheld Mitaka out on a one-on-one with a date card that reads, "Are you ready to cut loose?". When he meets her on the other side of town with the Entourage camera crew in tow, she pulls him toward an adjacent building and surprises him with a Latin dance class that has his entire face lighting up. They spend the night stepping, moving, and twirling, and they have a wonderful time together.

She offers him the rose over dinner, and he happily accepts.

The last date of the week is another group date, with _eleven_ men this time. But the nerves are gone with the success of the first group date, and Rey is excited about this one. She gets to see Poe this time, and Finn, and even Rumi...among others, of course.

The producers told her they made it a point to make sure _certain people_ were also included.

Rey decides not to dwell on that too much, and she instead focuses on her excitement about what she has planned for all of them this time around. The men meet her at a studio in Los Angeles, where she eagerly introduces them to Baze Malbus—the editor-in-chief of _SW_.

Jaws practically hit the floor when the men recognize him, most of them even before Rey even gets the name out of her mouth. _SW_ is an international men's magazine based in LA, famed for its impact on fashion, style, and culture—and Rey is ecstatic that they chose her season as their first ever _Entourage_ collaboration.

"So…I think some of you guys may be familiar with _SW_ ," she says jokingly, gesturing to Baze Malbus. Baze is no-nonsense, and he gives a terse nod in greeting to them as he critically sizes up the men. "Well, Baze is going to be joining us today for a very special project close to my heart."

Rey makes eye contact with some of the men as she speaks, Poe looking delighted, Finn mouthing _thank you_ when he catches her eye as he seems ready to expire on the spot, and Kylo looking no less disgruntled than usual, but she ignores him as her eyes sweep right over him.

" _SW_ is having a feature in next month's issue to promote non-profit animal welfare organizations. The Best Friends Animal Society is a charity that I've been volunteering with for many years now, and their mission is something that means a lot to me. So today, we're going to help _SW_ with their photo spread…with a puppy photo shoot!"

"Whaaaat!"

"No way!"

" _Shut the door!_ Are you serious?"

The men can hardly contain themselves, and Finn looks ready to have a heart attack. He fans himself and nudges Poe with his elbow, who is equally elated and grinning from ear to ear.

"Yes, very exciting," Baze mutters, dropping his glasses down the bridge of his nose to squint at some of them. He is a tall, broad-chested Asian man, long-haired and eccentric, and he currently wears a tailored blue suit with golden glasses perched on his face. "My team will help outfit you in appropriate wear for today, and then we're going to pair you with a puppy. Your job is to make nice with the dog and look pretty for the cameras, got it?"

" _Yeah!_ "

"And there's one last thing," Rey says slowly, putting up a hand. "There's one more guy we're going to have to add to our date today."

She can feel the surprise ripple through the men, and the cameras zoom in on that as they pan across the room.

"I have a friend from home," she continues, "and the truth is, he's been missing me a lot lately. So I asked Snoke, and he agreed to help me fly him out so he could join us for today's date. Do you guys think you might be alright with that?"

A chorus of delayed _sure_ s and _yeah_ s answer her, but Rey gives a lopsided smile. She didn't want to have to phrase it this way, but the producers had insisted.

"Alright, come here, BB-8!"

Somewhere off to the side, a producer releases the dog that she had been holding, and a corgi comes wildly trotting up to Rey's side. Rey crouches down to receive him, and he jumps into her arms besottedly, having spotted his mother the moment she walked in but too well-behaved to fight the hold of his carrier.

"So, you guys, this is my puppy, BB-8. He's a total mama's boy, and he's been letting his sitter know how much he misses me, so here he is with me now," Rey declares, as BB-8 showers her with licks and kisses from her arms. He gives a shrill bark of complaint at her lack of attention, and she grins and pets his head affectionately.

"Awww" goes around the group, and then there is mostly laughter as Rumi tells her, "Wow, you really had us going there!" Rey ducks her head sheepishly.

"So," Baze cuts in, folding his hands together, "your challenge today will be to take puppy photos with Rey and her dog. Based on how you perform in the photo shoot, I will be selecting one winner…to be featured with Rey on our cover."

"NO WAY!"

"OH MY GOD—are you _serious?_ "

Now the men are truly jubilant—jumping up and down, fists pumping in the air. Rey smiles into BB-8's fur, and she gestures to her dates. "Alright, go, go, go!" she tells them. "We're on a deadline today, so we have to work fast."

And they do.

Baze's wardrobe team make quick work of the men, and they're flying off to hair and makeup before Rey even knows it. She watches the scene unfold with interest as she cuddles with BB-8 from her own beauty station. A makeup artist hovers over her, powdering her nose with a big fluffy brush as she strikes up conversation.

"So, which one of them blokes are you interested in?"

Rey's eyes shoot to her face. "You're English," she says with surprise.

"Same as you," the makeup artist agrees.

"Wow," Rey smiles widely. "I'm not used to meeting that around here. Where're you from, then?"

"Birmingham, originally. I up and decided one day I wanted to be a makeup artist, so I traveled the world for a bit until I found myself here. Upset my folks at first, o'course, but they got over it," the girl says with a mischievous grin.

"Ah, I know the feeling," Rey nods sagely.

"Oh yes, everybody remembers. Your dad, wasn't it?"

Rey groans. "I'll never live that down."

"Don't fret. It was a funny bit, quite honestly." The makeup artist dusts some rouge over her cheeks now.

"Well, I'm from Westminster. London girl through and through, probably a bit obvious." Rey holds out her hand to shake in a belated gesture. "I'm Rey."

"Bazine." The girl shakes her hand, and then she says languidly, "So…you never answered my first question. Who's caught your eye so far, Rey from Westminster?"

"Umm…" Rey wrinkles her nose. Surely it couldn't hurt to talk to someone about her initial impressions, could it? She hesitates, and then, lowering her voice, she gestures for Bazine to lean in some more. "I really like the look of Poe so far," she confesses.

"Poe?" Bazine whispers. She glances around the studio, eyeing the men. "Which one is that?"

Rey feels her ears warming, but she jerks her chin in the direction of Poe across the room, who's just gotten up from his chair. "That one, the one standing. Tall, dark, and handsome?"

"Oh, yes, that's how I like them too," Bazine breathes, giggling conspiratorially. She dabs her fingers at something on Rey's cheek, blending it out. "I like the other tall, dark, and handsome one, though."

"Oh? Which one?" Rey furrows her brow, studying her dates.

"That one off over there, by himself right now. I think he looks quite striking," Bazine says, pointing with a half-smile. "He makes my insides twirl."

Rey laughs, her eyes following the direction of her finger. Her heart stops when she sees who she's pointing at.

" _What?_ "

"What?" Bazine glances at her.

" _That_ one? In the heavy dark coat?"

"Mm, that's the one. Why, something wrong?"

"I…" Rey is at a loss for words. She watches as Kylo takes a sip from his water bottle from his corner of the room, clothed in an all-black ensemble with a thick black trenchcoat thrown on top. Her eyes trace the curve of his throat as the water works its way down his throat. "I mean… _why_?"

Bazine gives her a funny look. "Well, we both have eyes, don't we? He's mad handsome."

"It's…" Rey is having trouble finding words. "He's not conventionally handsome though, is he?"

"No, but that's what makes him so interesting, don't you see?" Bazine sighs, giving him one last wistful look as she returns her attention to Rey's face.

Ah.

And there it was.

Something she hadn't wanted to put to words, a feeling that she had that first night, but had squashed when it was eclipsed by his terrible manners and strange attitude.

A hot feeling surges through her chest, all prickly and irritation for some reason.

"I don't think he's really quite all that," Rey mutters. "Also, he has a terrible temper."

"Oh, my. Seems like he hasn't made the best impression on you." Bazine bats her lashes curiously. "Is he going home soon, then?"

"Maybe."

"Can I have him, then?"

Rey's eyes shoot to her face, too stunned to respond. Bazine blinks back at her, equally confused. They stare at each other like that for a few, strange awkward seconds.

"Um. Yeah," Rey finally manages. "I'm sorry, I mean, yeah. If he goes home, go for it. Shoot your shot."

"Lovely!" Bazine beams down at her, and she resumes swiping at Rey's face with a brush.

Rey is busy staring at Kylo still, and when she thinks about why, all she can come up with is how annoyed she feels. She stares at him for so long, that eventually, he looks up, too.

Right at her.

And they're looking at each other again.

That strange feeling, the one she always gets when she's faced with his intense black eyes, accosts her. She immediately drops her gaze, but then regrets that action just as quickly. _Shit. I shouldn't have done that_. It now probably seemed like she had been looking at him for a long time before that. Which, to be fair, she _had_ been, but she didn't need him knowing that.

The first photo shoot goes smoothly, and Rey actually has a lot of fun.

She is joined by Armitage Hux, a pale, ginger-haired man from Georgia who is all Southern manners and charm—and Rey finds it enormously refreshing. Baze's team has paired him with a tiny black Scottish terrier, and together with BB-8, Rey is confident that they manage to get a lot of really good shots.

While she's sitting there on set with him, Hux regales her with stories of when he was a boy, growing up on a farm and having a pet ass—his words, not hers. ("Why an ass?" Rey had asked, perplexed, and Hux shrugged. "Because a horse would've cost an arm and a leg that my ma told me I didn't have any extra ones to give away.")

After they're done, Rey peers at the computer with the rest of the producers, making sure they have something they can work with. When they're all in agreement that they can move on, she unfolds herself from the gathering to grab something from craft services—but she is joined by a field producer who seemingly materializes out of nowhere, hounding her every step. "Rey," the producer says breathlessly. "Hold up a minute. I have to talk to you about something."

Rey stops moving, eyeing her curiously. "What's up?"

"You need…" Flushed, the producer looks around nervously, and then she leans closer, dropping her voice to a low whisper. "You need to talk to Kylo more."

Rey gawks at her. What _is_ it with today? "Why?" she says, not bothering to lower her voice. This seems to be the recurring question she keeps asking lately, like a Furby stuck on one squawking note.

"Well, you…you haven't talked to him. At all," the producer says, her voice tentative.

"Yeah." Rey doesn't offer anything else, just blinks at her. That would be the idea, yes.

"We need…more. Something we can work with. You've only had that one conversation with him on the first night." The producer looks like a deer caught in headlights.

Rey's disbelief culminates in two long, slow blinks.

Silence.

Finally, she gives a heavy sigh, casting her gaze heavenward in a pointed eyeroll, but she knows it's not the producer's fault for delivering the message of what is surely Snoke's handiwork.

"Fine," Rey relents. "I'll talk to him."

The producer perks up immediately, almost like that she had been expecting Rey to put up a fight. Rey suspects that her heated battle with Snoke on the elimination of the contestants had not gone unnoticed. "Great! Do you think you could do it over there?" The field producer jerks her thumb at a specific place at the edge of the set, where Baze's people are currently setting up for the next shoot with Finn and his Shiba Inu. "We have cameras already set up there, and we can pick up the best angle of your conversation."

"Um…" Rey squints at the place she pointed to. "Yeah. I guess."

And that is how she finds herself standing there a few minutes later, noticing Kylo lingering in that exact area and hurrying to catch him so she can fulfill her bloody reality TV drama quota for the day. She's picked up BB-8 in her arms again since she's on standby for shooting with Finn, and it's a little awkward with her giant furball baby in her face, but she doesn't really care as long as she can get this over with.

He notices her the moment she moves nears him, stiffening obviously, and it makes Rey wonder what he's even doing on a show like this if he seems to react in such a visceral way to her very presence. But he doesn't move away, and Rey thinks that it's a start.

There's a huge English Springer Spaniel standing at friendly attention near his legs, tall and brown-eyed with a long, curly black-and-white coat that heartstoppingly reminds her of his hair. Which, on second thought, is probably why they picked it for him, since all of the men's dogs seem to resemble them.

BB-8 gives a short yelp when he spots the larger dog, presumably in greeting, as he starts squirming in her arms to sniff at a potential new friend. The Spaniel turns its head softly, eyeing him, but it barely moves from its spot except for a single, unhurried blink. BB-8 is undeterred and pushes his nose even closer, testing the limits of his hold in Rey's arms.

"BB-8!" Rey squeaks, readjusting her grasp. She gives an apologetic look to the other dog first, and then at the man towering over him. "Sorry, he's excited to be seeing so many doggie faces today."

Kylo eyes her wordlessly, and for a moment, Rey thinks she's going to be treated to silence again. She remembers their last true interaction, when she bumped into him and chose not to say anything to him for it—and she thinks that she would deserve it, probably. But he surprises her when he does say something, and the rumble of his voice fills the air between them.

"It's fine."

She cocks her head, waiting to see if he would say anything else. When he doesn't, Rey takes a deep breath, racks her brain, and then says: "I'm sorry."

He glances at her, quick and surprised. "What?"

"For the other night. I ran into you, and I think I was so surprised I forgot to say something."

"Oh." Kylo is silent again, and she glances at him, wondering if he would buy it. In truth, she had been deeply annoyed, and if he didn't think he owed her an apology for the events of the night, then surely she didn't need to converse with him either.

The way he won't meet her eyes tells her that her explanation is not convincing enough, but he murmurs, again: "It's fine."

His voice is so much softer than she would expect it to be, and it's like she's pinning that rose to his jacket all over again. For some reason, Rey feels…guilty.

"Why're you here?" She blurts out.

"What?" He jolts, almost as if she had tried to touch him, but Rey is sure she didn't. She looks at him expectantly, and repeats, slower this time, "Why are you here?"

"I…" Kylo stares at her, and then he rapidly glances around the room, looking first at the cameras, and then the set, and then the dog next to him. "It's…this is a group date." He swallows, and she watches his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat. "Right?"

"That's not what I meant. Why are you here, on this show?" Rey asks, a touch of impatience in her voice.

He stares at her again, this time like she's grown three heads. She holds his gaze, unwilling to back down from the question. Kylo pulls his eyes away first, and then he mutters something, entirely too low for her to hear.

Rey frowns, and she inches closer to him. "I'm sorry, what?"

He glances at her again, and then he gives a small, almost imperceptible exhale that she wouldn't have caught if she hadn't been watching him so closely. When he speaks again, his voice is still quiet, but she is able to make out the words this time: "I'm here for you."

He meets her eyes when he says it now, so her reaction is plain for him to see when she processes his response. At first, what Rey feels is pure, unadulterated shock— _what?—_ but that only lasts for a brief moment, before it is just replaced with irritation at the blatant lie.

At least he's trying to feign interest now. _Someone must've clued him in_ , she thinks. But did his response to have to be so generic? It honestly hurts, how little he's trying here.

"Right," Rey says slowly. "For me." She should leave it at that. Rey thinks that there's plenty in this conversation that the editors can use. But something bold and angry inside of her prompts her to say, "And what is it that you like about me, again?"

Her words hang in the air, and her flat tone says it all. She's making a point. He hasn't even spoken to her since he arrived. The question must have its intended effect, because Kylo stares at her with mounting intensity, and then he tears his gaze away. Rey feels a dull satisfaction from his non-answer. Right.

There it is.

 _Now_ she can leave. And she turns on her heel, about to do just that, when the sound of his voice stops her again, sudden and fierce: "You're not alone."

It takes her a moment to process what he's said. It takes her another moment to realize that his words aren't a response to the question she's just asked. It takes her a longer moment, still, to place the words, to remember why they sound so achingly familiar.

She whips around sharply to look at him.

He's standing there, unblinking. He doesn't say it again.

Without warning, tears push their way up to the surface, and Rey finds herself fighting them back. But she knows her eyes have become wet and shiny, and Kylo is all astonishment across from her.

He probably didn't expect her reaction.

To be honest, neither did she.

Kylo makes a small, hesitant movement to reach for her, one that Rey is wryly confident that he will _not_ follow up on, and she doesn't give him the chance to find out. She marches away from him, her heels noisily clacking away as she heads back to her makeup station so she can find someone for a touch-up.

Of all the things Rey had been expecting Kylo to say to her, it hadn't included him making a reference to her adoption.

If someone had asked Rey if she thought Kylo Ren had watched her season of _The Groom_ , she would've been willing to bet a lot of money on a negative answer.

After all, she wasn't really sure why he was here, but she was breathtakingly confident it wasn't for her.

So her winded response upon learning that he had, in fact, watched her season, was only fair. And he had just weighed in on one of her past conversations, right in front of her face.

And it wasn't just any conversation.

Much of Rey's journey on _The Groom_ had been eclipsed by other factors, like the juicier details of her breakup with Cassian at the end, or the disastrous hometown date, with her father's unintelligible rambling about ducks and cokes. People like to talk about her friendship with Jyn Erso— _"How could she not see it coming?"_ —and they like to speculate whether or not things would have been different if she had recognized the extent of Cassian's interest in her friend before the very end.

What they don't talk about, amazingly enough, is the most personal and vulnerable conversation that Rey has ever had on the show. The story about how she was given birth to in a McDonald's bathroom floor, and tossed in a dumpster to fend for herself. To live, to die.

At the age of less than an hour.

She told the story to Cassian on their third one-on-one date. Rey had known that sob stories were expected after you started getting one-on-one dates, but she kept putting off telling him about it. It was too awkward, too personal. She didn't even know how to bring it up. For one thing, she wouldn't just be telling Cassian. She would be telling the whole world, too.

And she had never shared that part of herself with many people before.

When she finally did muster up the courage to tell him, it was the most terrifying thing she had ever done in her entire life. Because even though she didn't put this part into words—all of her fears, all of her worst insecurities, all of her nightmares and worst character flaws were buried between the details of that story, if someone looked hard enough.

She didn't know how to tell the story to Cassian without crying a little, and he had rubbed circles into her back while telling her gently, patiently, over and over again: "I'm here. I'm here."

Because after describing getting adopted into a happy, loving family with parents who cherished her—after starting school and realizing everyone had biological parents, a fact she only became too aware of after getting mercilessly bullied when old articles on her birth had been dug up—after growing up and feeling isolated all her life, thinking she could never connect to anyone in the way she wanted to—after describing the feeling that she thought she would always be alone, abandoned and unlovable—what she had said at the end of her story was this: "I had never felt so alone."

And now, Cassian wasn't here.

He, too, had gone. He had left, just like she always knew he would. He had only confirmed what she already knew about herself, that there was something about her that was _wrong_ , something about her that would always make people want to leave.

And now, this.

Kylo, of all people, trying to tell her that she wasn't alone.

_What is that even supposed to mean?_

"Everything alright, love?"

Bazine had to take a makeup wipe to fix her undereye area, and now she's patting concealer back in. Rey feels embarrassed about the extra work she's forcing her to do, but she holds her head up high. "I'm fine," she says in a bright voice, more for herself than anything.

"Are you sure?" Bazine asks.

"Positive."

Bazine makes a humming sound. "I saw you standing over there with that fellow you said had a bad temper. Is he really such an arse?"

"No," Rey says, a little too quickly. Then, realizing what she's said: "I mean, yes. He is an arse, but not because of this. I mean, this isn't why…it's not like that."

Bazine gives her a thoughtful look, and then casts another glance at the man in question.

The English Springer Spaniel's name is Sheena.

Rey learns her name when she's finally on-set with Kylo, and they're barely speaking to each other. He looks like he wants to say something to her, something big, something important, but whenever she recognizes the heavy look in his eyes, she abruptly turns away from him.

He learns to stop trying to bring it up. She turns away from him less after that.

Their communication with each other mostly consists of murmured affirmatives, when they're given directions by the photographer and they're trying to make sure that what they're doing is alright with the other.

Other than that, they don't really talk at all.

Instead, she throws her focus into loving on BB-8 throughout the shoot, kissing him, cuddling and nuzzling with every bit of affection she can muster. She is desperate for a distraction, after all.

Unfortunately for Rey, BB-8 seems smitten with the larger dog, Sheena. He is constantly moseying over to where she lies obediently next to Kylo, pulling Rey close to him than she would like. The photographer snaps shots of them like that, Rey accidentally draped across Kylo's leg while she's reaching for BB-8, or looking up at Kylo in surprise when she almost touches his hand by accident.

It occurs to Rey, halfway through the shoot, that this is the first time he's tolerated her presence so well. She is even touching him at some points, albeit he still seems to stiffen whenever she gets too close to the slivers of bare skin across his body. It's how she notices that she got too close to his hand for his comfort, when his entire body went taut underneath her reach.

She hears the whir of a camera shutter off in the distance, as she is trapped by the enormity of his intense gaze, their hands almost touching but not.

She can smell him again.

Pine, and something else. Cedar wood, maybe.

Her mouth feels dry, and her body is stiff and wound so tightly that she feels ready to burst.

Rey isn't sure how to name the feeling, so she doesn't.

"I don't get it," Hux comments, watching the couple currently on-set. The Bride, Rey, is tangled up with the resident sociopath, Kylo Ren, and the other contestants can't help but notice how little they talk to each other.

"What don't you get?" Sol Rivas, 27, a sales manager from White Plains, New York, asks through a mouthful of cracker. He had just returned from raiding crafty, and he rejoins the other contestants in their small huddle now.

Hux turns away from the set, looking at the man meaningfully. "So, all of our dogs kinda look like us, right?" He points a finger at the Spaniel next to Kylo, and sure enough, the dog's coat seems awfully reminiscent of the man's long hair.

"Right," Sol says slowly, crunching away.

"But how come _mine_ and yours don't?" Hux says, turning to Finn as he gestures to the both of them.

Finn, who has been watching Rey and Kylo while deep in thought, snaps to attention. "Sorry?" he asks, bewildered.

"Our dogs don't really look like us," Hux repeats, his brow furrowing.

"What? I don't think so." Finn blinks slowly. His Shiba Inu is currently being pampered with treats in the back, after finishing the photo shoot. "Shibas have a kind of happy face, and I think I'm always smiling all the time."

"That's true," Poe nods along, and some of the other men offer words of agreement.

"Maybe," Hux persists, "but your dog has a bright coat. I got a black-haired dog, and yours is the opposite. Shouldn't it be the other way around?"

Finn's jaw drops open. He stares at the other man, stunned. "You mean, I should've gotten the black dog, and you should've gotten the lighter dog?"

"Well, yeah. Essentially. It would've made more sense, wouldn't it?"

"Are you serious right now, man?"

"What?" Hux asks defensively. "It's true."

"Uh. First of all, that's racist as hell." Finn is starting to get angry now. "Second—no, there's not even a _second_. That's just racist as hell."

"What are you talking about?" Hux looks annoyed now, too. "I'm just talking about their fur color. You see? Kylo over there has a black-haired dog, because he has black hair. I have red hair, so shouldn't I have gotten the red-haired dog? And you have black hair, so—"

"You're telling me I _had_ to get the black dog, because I'm black. Half the men here have dogs that don't match their hair, Hux," Finn exclaims, throwing his hands up in the air. He doesn't say the other part of that sentence—that half the men here are white. "And what kind of dog is red, anyway? _Clifford?_ "

"Well, your dog—"

"—was brown, thanks for asking, brown and white—"

"—okay, yeah, but in certain lighting, it looks really similar to _my_ hair—"

"—what in sweet baby Jesus's name are you even going on about right now?"

"Hey," Hux snaps. "Don't take the Lord's name in vain. "

There is an elongated pause, practically comical, and then Finn speaks. "You're getting onto _my_ case about taking the Lord's name in vain, after you went and told me that I can't look like anything other than a black dog because I'm black?"

"I'm talking about hair color, not skin color. You don't have to put it that way, jeez—"

"I don't see you saying any of this [BLEEP] to Rumi!" Finn gestures wildly to Rumitar Shay, black-haired and brown-skinned, who is sitting next to the fray looking like a deer in headlights with his brown Dachshund dog.

Hux pauses. "Okay, that's different, and you know it."

"No, I don't," Finn says, enunciating each word slowly. "Please, enlighten me. How is it different?"

Silence.

"Other than, of course, the fact that he is a brown man, and he has a brown dog, even though his hair color doesn't match?"

"Look," Hux argues back heatedly. "You're taking this entirely out of context, and you're also blowing it out of proportion. I didn't say it like that, so get your panties out of a twist."

"Oh, okay," Finn says flatly. "So we're going to make toxic masculine comments on top of racist comments too? You're really on a roll there. Keep going."

Hux scoffs in disgust. "You really like pulling out that race card, don't you—"

" _What is going on here?_ "

Everyone falls quiet as Rey approaches, and the cameras gleefully swivel to her stormy expression. Kylo is trailing soundlessly behind her, so they must have already finished their photo shoot. That, or they were attracted by the escalating voices.

"I heard the shouting all the way from over there. Can someone explain to me what's happening?"

Finn looks properly contrite, and he shoves his hands in his pockets. But the crease in his brow remains, and he says to Rey, "Sorry. I really am. I just can't do this right now."

Without another word, he turns on his heel and walks off. A flurry of field producers materialize as soon as he is off-camera, falling in step with him as they start peppering him with questions, and Rey watches them disappear around the corner.

She turns back to the rest of the men, her eyes landing on Hux. "Hux," she says, impatiently. "What happened?"

Hux puts his hands up in the air. "Heck if I know. I just tried talking to him, and he got all aggressive and started shouting at me."

"That," Poe cuts in dryly, "is not what happened, and you know it."

Rey looks at Poe, surprised. She gauges the expressions on the rest of the men, and she can't help but notice that many of them are shooting Hux some strange looks. Then she frowns, and she looks at Hux again. "Do you want to take a minute? Maybe get something to cool down?"

"You know what? Yeah, I think I'm going to do that." Hux scratches the back of his head, and he stands to leave. "Sorry, Rey."

He gives her a half smile, and then he's gone.

Rey sighs, rubbing her temples slowly. "I'm not happy right now. I don't want this kind of thing to happen on our group dates. Ever."

There's a murmured chorus of "yeah" and "Sorry, Rey", and she feels a gentle pat on her shoulder.

"Sorry about that, Rey." That's Rumi, looking at her with a kind expression. "We know you don't need all this drama."

Rey feels herself softening, but she is still worried about Finn, who looked very distressed when he left. She would have to have a private word with him later. "Thanks, Rumi."

"Let us help you take your mind off of it," Poe suggests. His eyes still linger briefly on where the contestants disappeared, before flickering back to Rey. "We can talk about something else, whatever you want."

She smiles up at him, and the rest of the contestants nod in agreement.

"Or you know, _not_ talk. If that's what you prefer." Poe throws a cheeky grin to the person over Rey's shoulder.

Kylo freezes when he realizes what Poe has just said. Poe seems to realize the exact moment that he messed up, and he quickly opens his mouth, but Kylo beats him to it.

"What is your _problem_?" Kylo snarls, jabbing a finger in his direction.

"Wait, that's not how I meant it—"

But it's too late. Kylo has whipped around on his heel, and he is already three strides ahead, long gone.

Rey stares after him, her mouth in an "o".

"Shit." That's Poe again.

Cut to Rey, sitting down for a video confessional. "There is entirely too much testosterone on this date," she says flatly. "Everyone's clashing with everyone, and it's hard for me to get to know anyone when they're all so busy fighting each other. It's been like this since the first night." She gives a big sigh. "I'm sick of it."

There's a pause, and then she says, "But I'm worried about Finn. He's not usually like this. He's been so sweet and friendly every time he's talked to me, and it makes me really wonder what provoked him."

On her way back from the makeshift confessional room, Rey's attention is drawn by the sound of hushed voices. She pauses in the hallway, and then she turns her head in the direction that the voices came from: a room off to her left, slightly ajar.

Rey shakes her head, about to leave it alone, but her curiosity gets the better of her when she realizes that she _recognizes_ one of the voices.

Intrigued, Rey wanders closer to the room, and she parks herself just around the corner of the door so she can see inside it. Her mouth falls open when she realizes who she's looking at.

Sure enough, there's Bazine, lounging around in one of the dressing rooms, moving closer to a figure whose back is to the table.

"I don't suppose you'd be willing to give me your number, would you?" She says, giggling coquettishly.

The response is strained, but firm. "I'm not really here for that."

Rey's eyes fall on Kylo, who looks like he would rather be anywhere in the world right now than where he currently is. Bazine is practically between his legs now, and she smiles prettily up at him.

"Anything I can do to convince you otherwise?"

There's a white hot fire burning in Rey's chest, and for several seconds she just stands there, drinking in the sight of them together. But it's too raw, it makes her too vulnerable, and she hates it.

"No. There isn't."

Rey swallows, hard. There. He's got it handled. She can leave well enough alone.

She backs away from the cracked door. But as she's fixing to turn away and mind her own bloody business, she can't help but notice it. The hand that's coming down on Kylo's chest, attached to Bazine's arm.

Rey's eyes flicker to Kylo's hands, and she sees his knuckles _whiten_ with how tightly he is gripping the edge of the table.

She pushes the door open completely, the sound not quiet, and she says cheerily, "Oh, there you are, Bazine! Baze is looking for you."

Both heads snap up to look at her, and there is just silence as Bazine stares at her, her face twisted in a strange expression.

"What's going on here?" Rey says glibly, letting her eyes roam over them.

"Mm." Bazine slowly pushes away, and she flips her hair over her shoulder. "Nothing at all, I suppose. Where's Baze?"

"He's on-set. I think he wants to do something different with Gideon's look." Gideon Hask, 31, a consulting firm CEO from Pasadena, California. But that was a lie, and Baze isn't looking for Bazine, and Rey knows that Bazine will find that out soon enough.

"Thanks." As Bazine passes her, she mutters, pitched almost inaudibly: "I think you're not uninterested, after all."

Rey whips around to face her, her hackles rising, but Bazine is already too far. She didn't realize that her earlier comments to the makeup artist had been any kind of invitation for her to come on to any of them _while_ she was still on this date—and now she was getting testy with her for stopping it? The disrespect would be funny, if it wasn't so infuriating.

She slowly allows herself to glance at Kylo, now that he's alone again. Well, with her.

Alone with her.

He slowly pushes himself up from the table, and his features are stiff and unreadable.

"That," he says, pacing his words carefully, "wasn't what you thought it was."

Oh.

 _Oh_.

"I know. I heard the conversation," Rey says breezily, making a dismissive gesture. "Are you alright?"

"What?" Now he looks surprised, and Kylo seems to realize that his fists are still clenched at his side. He flexes them carefully, as if he is trying to shake off the tension. He glances at her. "You heard the conversation?"

"I wasn't trying to eavesdrop," Rey says hurriedly. "I wasn't even going to come in. But…" she trails off, and then she swallows, gesturing to his chest. "You don't like being touched. Right?"

His eyes grow wide and round like saucers.

She gives him a funny look. "Right? It's not a big secret or anything, is it?"

He opens his mouth, and then closes it again. When he opens it again, he manages to say, "No."

"Okay. Good. Yeah, I figured it out the first night when you stopped me from hugging you. You should probably lead with that, though, you know? When you meet other people. It might help." Rey gives a shrug.

He stares at her for a few moments longer, and then he swallows. "You're wrong, though."

Her eyes cut to him, startled.

"I don't like being touched by _strangers_."

Oh. Rey is taken aback, and then she studies him, her chest feeling tight. "Am I?"

He starts. "What?"

Rey isn't sure what she's asking, or why she's asking it. "Am I a stranger?"

She blinks, and suddenly he has moved across the room to her, towering over her at his full height, and she ridiculously feels like a Chihuahua.

"No."

With that, he moves past her, and exits the room.

Kylo gets the cover of _SW_.

No one can argue with it, really, once Baze Malbus unveils the winning photo.

In the photograph, Rey is dressed in a loose, flowy beige top with a sharp collar and prim white skirt, and her soft brown hair has been pinned up in a low chignon bun. Kylo, on the other hand, is dressed in severe, slashing lines of black on black, with a simple black shirt underneath a dark black trenchcoat that flares out his shoulders in a dramatic way.

He leans against a gray chaise lounge, which his English Springer Spaniel sits atop, her expression perfectly gentle and sweet. Rey, on the other hand, is caught mid-action as she is almost draped across one of Kylo's legs, trying to reach for her mischievous corgi, BB-8. Her hand instead almost catches Kylo's hand, resting on his standing knee, and they both stare at each other, their expressions entranced.

Some of the men look clearly displeased, like they've tasted something sour, but they don't argue with it.

Baze, however, is _delighted_.

* * *

"Thank you all so much for today," Rey starts, looking around the huge wraparound sofa. They are in a private room on the twenty-sixth floor of the R.B. Kennedy skyscraper in L.A. for their night portion of the group date, and now it's the end of the night.

"I know it wasn't the easiest or smoothest date in history, but I think we ended up having fun. I really appreciate you guys for going with the flow, and for putting yourselves out there no matter what," she smiles widely. "I know that _SW_ has definitely got some great photos from us for their feature now, and Baze was really pleased with us when we left his studio."

The men give her big grins in return, and Rey is relieved to see that Finn seems back to his usual self. She didn't manage to have the proper chat with him that she wanted to have—she checked in with him, he told her he was fine, and then glossed over the whole ordeal—but she knows they'll have more time in another place. Poe seems to be in high spirits too, which she is glad for, since he seemed down during the rest of the date earlier.

Rey glances down, and then she picks up the red rose on the table. "I want to give this rose to someone that I saw a lot of potential in today." She swallows, but pushes herself to continue. "I didn't expect it, but I think I see something here."

She twists the flower in her hands, and she takes a nervous breath. "Kylo, will you accept this rose?"

The man in question meets her gaze across the room, surprised. Rey bites her lip, something she doesn't usually do when she wears red lipstick, but if she was unsure before whether or not he had anticipated this, now she knows for certain. She watches as his expression slowly turns wary, and he glances around the room.

Understandably, the rest of the men are just as shocked. They didn't see most of her interactions with him today, and Rey vaguely realizes that what she's doing now won't help with his status in the house. She thinks back, remembering how _thrilled_ Snoke and the producers had been when she let them know her pick for the group date rose—but she isn't doing it for the reason they want her to. However, she also suspects they don't care _why_ she's choosing to do it, as long as she does it.

Kylo slowly moves forward to accept the flower, and when she's pinning it to his jacket again, he looks up at her. His expression is almost shy, and Rey gets a strange feeling, like she can't keep up with all the facets of him that she is discovering.

Her own look to him is soft and vulnerable, and her heart is beating a mile a minute when she finally pulls back. She allows a small, genuine smile to peek through her lips.

The camera pans to the rest of the men sitting on the sofa, who have _definitely_ noticed this interaction. Poe, off to the side, is honestly floored. He runs a hand through his hair, his face scrunching up when he meets Finn's eyes on the other side of the sofa, who is wearing an identical expression of incredulity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHO. IS. HERE. FOR. THE. RIGHT. REASONS?
> 
> Guess you'll have to stay tuned for Week 3 and find out! There will be more video confessionals in the next chapter. I wanted to format this chapter a little differently to get to the heart of the show, but I'm too attached to the multimedia format to abandon it completely.
> 
> Kudos and comments are my brain fuel, so if you enjoyed this chapter, I would appreciate it so much if you would drop your thoughts down below. I always get so inspired hearing from readers! ❤️
> 
> GORGEOUS art commission by [bleumis](https://twitter.com/bleumis) for my puppy photo shoot! I honestly can't stop staring at the portrait. I have it downloaded on my computer, my phone, and I even made it my phone lockscreen.
> 
> Follow me on [tumblr](http://laurarobin.tumblr.com)!


	3. Week 3, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The men become acquainted with one another in the house. A surprise guest comes into town. This week's first group date arrives, as well as startling revelations about each of the men. Who is #HereForTheRightReasons, and who will go? Find out on this week's all-new episode of _The Bride_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am actually so sorry it took me so long to update 😭 This was a tough middling chapter to write, because there were so many important things to build upon, and so many other different foundations I had to lay down. There are a lot of interactions between the men in this update, and not so much Rey, but I think it was necessary for what I was trying to do. I hope you enjoy!

**#TheBride hashtag on Twitter**

The Bride @TheBrideFOBC  
Catch up on the latest episode of #TheBride, now available on @hulu and @FOBC! What do you think?

Kirsten @kirstenmav  
WHAT THE FUCKKK  
#TheBride  
[blurry screenshot of Rey pinning the rose to Kylo's jacket]

Queenie Sommar @QueenieSommar11  
i don't get it………#AreWeWatchingTheSameThing #TheBride  
[GIF of Kylo's dead stare during Snoke's welcome speech]

Swayam Dhingra @ShakeEmSwayam  
Rey, giving the group date rose to the guy who is literally the least interested in her:  
#TheBride  
[GIF of April Ludgate from _Parks and Recreation_ saying, "I love garbage."]

Jake @flylikejay18  
MY BOY POE WAS ROBBED #TheBride

Bride Fan @TheBridesFan  
Rumi is too normal for this show…he's literally so drama-free 😭💓 #TheBride

S P O O K Y 👀 @ShontelleJoy  
ok can we please talk about mf Hux thinking black folks can only look like black dogs.......  
#TheBride  
[image of confused Nick Young with question marks surrounding his head]

christine @chrissymeegen  
Replying to @ShontelleJoy  
🙄🙄🙄 If Ingo had been on this date, Hux would've told him he could only have a yellow dog #TheBride

meep @meeep333  
Replying to @ShontelleJoy @chrissymeegen  
good thing #TheBride isn't progressive enough to cast indigenous people 🙂 Hux would've tried competing with him for #CliffordTheBigRedDog #TheBride

Nadia @nadylonglegs  
Replying to @ShontelleJoy @chrissymeegen @meeep333  
Can we get just 1 day without #whitenonsense #TheBride

Hachi T @hachikowoof  
idk you guys I think Kylo looks really good with Rey 🙈 #TheBride

The house has settled into a routine over the last few weeks.

It goes something like this: wake up, get strapped into a mic, grab breakfast, fight to take a shower, and then smile. The cameras are there, and you're on.

To be frank, the cameras are there from when the men wake up and get mic'd, but those aren't the interesting bits that get shown on TV screens. Usually, the men notice the cameras and the crewmen hovering around them more after they've showered and had breakfast. Eating sounds are difficult to edit out in post-production, after all.

And it's boring.

It is mind-numbingly boring to be there, without Internet, or movies, or many books at all unless they packed their own. There is a free-flowing supply of alcohol around them at all times, which many of the men happily take advantage of while they all lie around the mansion, waiting for date cards.

They're not allowed to leave, of course.

All the grocery shopping is done for them, and there's a growing list each week that a handler adds to whenever they run out of something. Personal items and requests aren't really allowed, but the house is usually stocked with plenty of fruits, vegetables, cereals, bread, eggs, yogurt, and sandwich meat.

Things get tense after the second week.

It starts with the orange juice.

The orange juice is from last week, and the show handler hasn't gotten around to making a grocery run that morning yet. There's still a single jug of it left in the refrigerator, a little more than half full, when Poe plucks it from the shelf, unscrews the top, and starts guzzling it down.

He's still downing it when Kylo enters the kitchen, headed for the refrigerator, but the bigger man stills at the sight of Poe also there. He watches him, his eyes following his every movement, and the tension is so thick that Poe eventually notices and gulps down a final swallow, setting the jug on the counter.

"What?" Poe says, warily.

Kylo crosses his arms. "That's the last orange juice." He doesn't sound happy.

"Um." There's an awkward pause. "Yeah. Evan's getting more later today, though."

The other man blinks at him, undeterred. "Later isn't now," he retorts, pressing his lips together into a thin line.

"Sorry? D'you want some?" Poe offers, pushing the jug at him across the counter.

But Kylo glances down at it with so much apprehension that if Poe didn't know any better, he would think he had just offered him poison. "No."

"What? Are you a germaphobe?" Poe says, taken aback.

Kylo lowers his gaze, his face mottling with color. "Something like that," he mutters.

"Are you serious? We're all grown-[BLEEP] men here, you don't have to be so squeamish about—"

"Living in the same house doesn't mean we all have to share the same germs," Kylo interrupts a little heatedly, and it's probably the most he's ever spoken in the house so far. "Did you think about the other people who also live here, when you picked that up? Who might not want to be drinking after you?"

Poe looks chastened, but he quickly recovers. "You're being a little dramatic, don't you think?"

* * *

Cut to Poe, sitting down for a video confessional. "Who gets _that_ worked up over orange juice?" He shakes his head in disbelief.

* * *

Kylo's face scrunches up. "Does everything always have to be a joke to you?" he says tightly. He pushes the orange juice back across the counter in a single, sharp movement.

Poe's mouth falls open. "What are you _talking_ about?"

* * *

Cut to Kylo, sitting down for a video confessional. "I like things clean. And neat." He works his jaw as he stares at someone beyond the camera, and then his gaze flickers back to the camera. "I don't like it when other people come in and mess that up."

* * *

"There's a lot of orange juice left in there. You didn't have to take it all." The bigger man blinks at him. "But you were only thinking about you. Again."

Poe is still staring at him in shock. "Again, what are you _talking_ about?"

* * *

Cut to Poe, gesturing wildly to the camera. "I mean, sure, I guess I should've thought twice about it. But that's what people at my house do all the time when there's only one thing of orange juice left, and it's probably going to get finished off today!" He runs his fingers through his hair, clearly bothered. "I'm not a total [BLEEP]hole, okay?"

* * *

Cut to Kylo. "Yeah. We're not friends."

* * *

Kylo fixes a hard stare on Poe, his fist twitching at his side. Poe takes notice of this and his eyes shift between Kylo and his fist, still not moving. The camera pans, following Poe's line of vision, and it does a happy super zoom-in on Kylo's fist.

"What?" Poe asks finally. "Are you gonna punch me over some OJ?" He says it almost like it's meant to be a joke, but the thick silence that he's met with makes any attempt at humor fall flat.

Kylo jerks his head sharply at the words, but he doesn't respond. He glances down at his hands, and his fists unclench. When he looks back up, he swallows, hard. "Funny," he mutters.

With that, he turns around and walks away.

* * *

Cut to Poe. He stares at the camera, blinking. "I think the man was gonna punch me over some OJ."

* * *

Cut to Kylo. He gives an annoyed huff, rolling his eyes. "No, I was not going to…punch him over orange juice. What kind of assumption is that?"

His gaze switches to someone sitting across from him, someone asking him a quiet question. "Did I…Was I thinking about it? I mean…I guess the thought crossed my mind?"

* * *

The next time it happens, it's over toothpaste.

The toothpaste that they use in the house is blue, and it gets everywhere if they're not being careful. They have to rinse the sinks after they're done, and if they don't, trails of blue get left behind like the bathroom has been invaded by diseased snails.

Ingo Salik is a messier man than most other people, and he's straight out of college where his friends probably didn't give a damn.

He has to be reminded about his crusty, dried-out dishes around the house, and the dirty socks that are haphazardly flung around the shared rooms. He leaves his possessions everywhere, and everyone finds his Marvel comic books stacked on top of every square inch surface in the common areas.

It's not an ideal situation, but Ingo is only 24. He's most likely not going to get very far in this competition, his housemates agree, because it's already evident he's not husband material, and Rey will find that out soon enough.

They leave him alone—but not everyone gets the memo.

One morning, Kylo Ren comes out of the bathroom with a purpose, and the men who are in line outside the door scramble to get out of his way as he enters the living room, where heads snap up and turn to look at him after his abrupt—and loud—entrance.

"Who just used the bathroom?"

Ingo Salik slowly stirs from the couch, raising an uncertain hand into the air. "Uhhh…if you mean five minutes ago? That was me."

The bigger man turns his heavy, appraising stare on him. "You left a mess upstairs."

"Oh…umm…I'm sure I didn't?" Ingo says, scratching the back of his neck. "I cleaned up before I went out."

Some of the other men in the living room exchange glances—not that Ingo sees it, being the sole focus of Kylo Ren.

"I see," Kylo says woodenly. "What did you clean up?"

"Umm…I put everything back the way it's supposed to be? And I, uh…"

"There's a huge swamp on the floor next to the shower."

"Oh? That's weird…"

"You didn't flush the toilet."

"Whoops…"

"And there is blue. All. Over. The. Sink."

There is complete and utter silence, and then Ingo shrinks back on the couch. "Um…sorry?"

"I don't care if you're sorry," Kylo says, his voice low and quiet. "Go clean it."

"Right." Ingo pops out of his seat before the last word is even out of his mouth, and he goes flying up the stairs. When he's disappeared out of sight, Kylo notices the silent stares around the room, and he blinks slowly.

"What're you looking at?" he says, and the unexpected sound of his voice is a cue to the other men to find something else in the room to be suddenly fascinated with. Kylo surveys the room one last time, a tick in his jaw, before he sweeps back up the stairs after Ingo.

* * *

Cut to Thanisson Reed, 24, a sales accountant, sitting in the video confessional room. "Man, uh…Kylo Ren, man." He gives an uncertain laugh. "He's something else."

* * *

Cut to Ingo Salik, not in the video confessional room, but pulled off to the corner of a hallway. "Kylo is _scary_ ," he shudders. "He's a big [BLEEP]ing dude, man."

* * *

Cut to Hux, resting his chin against his hand. "Looks like _some_ one didn't get his morning coffee," he says in a singsong voice.

* * *

Cut to Tritt Opan, 32, a marketing analyst. He wrinkles up his nose. "I'm not sure Kylo has ever interacted with real humans before. I have this theory. I think he just watched a movie about humans, once."

* * *

Cut to Dopheld Mitaka, 26, a psychotherapist who casts a tentative glance beyond the camera, and then directly at it. "I think…I think he just doesn't know how he comes across. He's pretty intimidating."

* * *

Cut back to Hux, who's now glancing at his fingernails. "Isn't he supposed to be an actor? I thought I heard someone say that he was." He blows a quick breath on his hand. "I thought actors were supposed to be…I dunno, like, charismatic? Or likeable. Can't he _act_ like someone else?"

* * *

Cut to Sol Rivas, 27, a sales manager. He blinks at the camera after being told something by someone out of frame, and he lets out a sharp bark of laughter. "He's a what, now?" Sol clears his throat, rubbing the back of his neck. "Um…wow. He must not be a very good one, then, is he?"

* * *

Cut back to Hux. "Or," he says meaningfully, "he's way better than we all think." Hux points a finger gun to someone, whose question he had been responding to.

* * *

On Tuesday, Finn walks in on Kylo on the patio by himself, reading.

Finn had been looking for a place to cool down after his morning workout, but the chairs closest to the mansion seemed thoroughly occupied, despite having only one occupant in a single seat. The aura that Kylo gives off leaves no room for uncertainty.

Finn is only too happy to turn around, wiping sweat off his brow with his arm, but he notices the enormous book in Kylo's hands and stops in his tracks. He squints at the title, and sure enough, he isn't mistaken.

"Uh, hey there, Kylo," Finn says, awkwardly. He gives a small wave when the other man looks at him. "Whatcha…whatcha reading there?"

He gets a single blink for his trouble, and Finn almost thinks he's not going to respond.

But at last, Kylo taps the cover of the book with a finger, as if Finn is asking a stupid question and the answer is quite obviously _there_. Which, to be fair, Finn knows where the title is. He just wants to hear it from the man himself.

" _Atlas Shrugged_ ," Kylo says, after a moment's pause longer.

"Uh-….huh. And, um. Why are you reading it, if you don't mind my asking?" Finn says, smiling in what he hopes is a friendly way. His mind is running a mile a minute: _Lord, I knew it._ He had to bring his own copy for this to even be here.

Kylo eyes him suspiciously. Which, also fair. Finn knows that people don't usually get interrogated for their reading material. And it's not like Finn isn't being biased for asking.

"It's interesting," Kylo says in a monotone voice. "It makes me think a lot."

Cool, cool. Cool cool cool, Finn thinks.

That is the sort of thing one says about a hugely controversial book considered a manifesto of radical politics, economics, and philosophy.

He keeps a wide clown grin pasted on his face as he backs away slowly from the patio. "Excellent," he says, making a vague gesture with his hands to the book. "You keep…you keep thinking on that."

Kylo gives him a strange look, followed by a languid blink as Finn completely disappears around the corner and into the house.

"…he was reading _Atlas Shrugged_!" Finn hisses in a low voice.

"No way," Poe breathes, his eyes so wide that they are practically popping out of his head.

"Way." Finn darts nervous glances around the kitchen where they stand, making sure they are alone in this conversation, before returning his gaze to Poe. "I mean, obviously, it's different if you have to read it for a college literature class, but…I think he was reading it for _fun_." Finn cannot emphasize this enough. "As in, he liked it. And agreed with it."

"Damn."

" _I know_."

"But honestly," Poe says slowly, "I don't think I'm surprised? That he likes to read that kind of thing." He gives Finn a meaningful look. "I mean, does he _not seem_ like the exact kind of guy to read that kind of thing?"

Together, they cast a glimpse to the doorway, and then they look at each other again. "Yeah," Finn nods solemnly. "Definitely that kind of guy."

"What do you think is his problem, anyway?" Poe says. Distractedly, he uncaps a carton of chicken broth and pours it into the blender, adding it to the mixture of ingredients already inside. When he is done, he places the lid over the blender and turns it on, and the sound of whirring fills the kitchen, completely blocking out their conversation to any eavesdropping ears—save for the mics strapped to their waists.

"I'm not sure," Finn begins hesitantly, leaning on the island as he watches Poe cook. It's Poe's turn tonight to cook in the house, and he's making something he calls _pepián_ , with hearty pieces of chicken on a bed of rice. "He just seems really, really mad. All the time. He's got the brooding thing down pat."

"I think he hates me," Poe says airily, and he switches the blender off when he seems satisfied with the purée. He turns his attention to a big black skillet on the stove, briskly dumping in a few teaspoons of olive oil with practiced grace. "I'm not sure what I did to him, but he just seems like he hated me on sight."

"Yeah, I remember that!" Finn exclaims, but then he seems to remember that he's in a public area of the house. He whips his head around the room, cautious, and when he speaks again, he has leaned in closer and his voice has lowered by a few octaves. "Some of the other guys were talking about it again the other day. Didn't you try to include him in the conversation, or something? And he freaked out?"

"He _really_ doesn't like being around me. I thought maybe the first night, I just caught him on a bad day, but now he just makes it a point to walk out of the room whenever I'm in it," Poe retorts dryly. He moves the halves of chicken breast around on the skillet as it sizzles and pops, and he shakes his head. "Did you see his face when I volunteered to cook tonight's dinner?"

Sometimes, of course, they're all _forced_ to be together in the same room, several times a day at the behest of the producers.

"He looked like he'd swallowed a whole lemon," Finn guffaws, and when Poe makes a vague gesture with his hands in the general direction of the counter, Finn automatically hands him the wooden spatula. "Did he think you were going to poison him?"

"He must've," Poe mutters, not tearing his gaze away from the chicken. "I saw him grab three boxes of cereal on his way to his room, so he probably _won't_ be having dinner with us tonight."

"Shame," Finn drawls. "I had it on good authority that cyanide was on the menu. My favorite."

"Hey, now," Poe warns, pointing at him fiercely with the spatula. "This is my grandmother's recipe for _pepián_ , so there will be no talk of poison in its presence. You're going to eat it, and you're going to like it, you hear?"

Finn clutches his chest dramatically, waggling his eyebrows. "I'll love it," he promises.

And that is the exact moment that someone pads into the kitchen, heavy footsteps announcing the abrupt arrival. Both Finn and Poe turn their heads at the same time to look at the entrance.

Of course it is Kylo Ren, Finn thinks wryly—probably summoned through dark magic at the sound of his name being spoken in these hallowed halls.

The bigger man reels back at the sight of them in the kitchen, and his mouth twitches into a look of pure distaste. He seems thoroughly prepared to turn back around again and hightail out of the kitchen, but then—against Finn's expectation, that does not happen. Kylo lingers there instead, blinking slowly, and he cocks his head. His eyes slide back and forth between the two men in the kitchen.

Finn exchanges a bewildered look with Poe, who matches his expression.

All three of them stare at each other like that, none of them knowing what to say to the other.

"Kylo," Poe says at last, cheerfully. "Will you be joining us for dinner?" He waves his spatula toward the skillet, where the chicken is still _pop_ - _pop_ -popping away in the oil.

Kylo's gaze flickers below Poe's chin—and then, with a finality to his thoughts, he meets Poe's eyes. "No," he says.

And he turns around and walks out.

Finn slowly begins to thaw from his frozen position under the intensity of Kylo's gaze, where he had been draped over the island counter just a few inches away from Poe at the stove. He looks at Poe again, his eyes wide like saucers.

"What," Poe says, distressed, "did he not like the apron?"

Together, they look at the black apron that Poe had thrown on when he'd started cooking, having found it when he was rummaging around the kitchen earlier.

It says, "Kiss the Chef" in big white letters, complete with a gaudy pair of red lips over Poe's chest.

"I like it," Finn offers consolingly.

The pool is, of course, a hot, popular area to while away the hours in a day.

By two in the afternoon almost every day, they've all pretty much run out of things to do in the house. Breakfast, workout routines, keeping the house tidy, and then…nothing else.

So the men usually find themselves lounging around the poolside in the late afternoon, sipping on craft beer and trying to stave off the intense boredom that comes with not having a single outside influence to distract them.

Not many of the men actually get into the water itself, but some of them will jump in and race the length of the pool from time to time. It's the perfect opportunity to show off toned abs and glistening pectorals that certain contestants do not miss out on.

Today, Hux and Tritt have taken over the pool with their antics.

The duo have become fast friends in the house, twin prankster souls completely in-sync, and they're usually in the pool before anyone else every day. Currently, they're joined by Sol Rivas and Thanisson Reed, and they're engaged in some bizarre battle of chicken fight in the water with Sol on Tritt's shoulders and Thanisson on Hux's shoulders.

In the end, Sol finally drops into the water with a hearty splash, and Thanisson pumps his fist into the air. " _Yes!"_ he crows, his face lighted with victory.

Sol breaks through the surface of the water, coughing out water from his lungs. "I don't think that was fair," he complains to Thanisson. "You're way lighter than me, so it's easier for Hux. I need someone in my weight class."

"Don't be a sore loser, Sol," Hux drawls, shaking droplets from his hair.

"Or," Sol says, " _or_ , Thanisson faces off against someone in _his_ weight class next. How about Ingo?"

Heads swivel to look at Ingo Salik, seated in a lawn chair next to the pool nearby Finn Storm and Poe Dameron.

"Hey, Ingo," Tritt calls out.

Ingo starts at the sound of his name, and he looks over to the men in the pool. So do Finn and Poe.

"Come fight Thanisson for us," Sol says, wading over to the edge of the water. "Pretty please, will you fight Thanisson for us?"

"Uhhh," Ingo says, considering. He glances between Sol, Tritt, Hux, and Thanisson, and he stands up slowly. "Sure. I'll play."

Finn shares a careful look with Poe, who gives the slightest roll of his eyes. The camera zooms into his expression.

" _Yes!_ " Sol crows, delighted—but unbeknownst to him, Hux has snuck up behind him, and suddenly, when Ingo is right at the edge of the pool, the ginger-haired man snakes an arm around his legs and _pulls_ him into the water with a mighty tug.

Ingo topples into the water, creating an enormous splash in the pool that sprays everyone within a five-meter distance.

When he emerges, he is coughing and sputtering indignantly. " _Hey!_ " he whines, but Hux and Tritt are laughing uproariously, and eventually, he gives in to the hilarity with good nature.

This is not quite as true for everyone around them, who are drenched with water and do not have the same mild temperament as Ingo Salik.

Finn looks particularly displeased, since he was holding a perfectly good bottle of beer that's now been diluted with chlorine water. But there also happened to have been a dark-haired giant passing through the pool area after his dedicated afternoon workout, at the precise moment that Hux decided to take action.

Kylo Ren seems frozen in place, and his huge body takes up so much space in the middle of the pool area that Hux also eventually notices him. The cameras zoom in on Kylo, his shoulders practically vibrating with tension.

Hux exchanges a look with Tritt, and the corners of his mouth curl up in a Cheshire grin.

"Hey, Kylo," Hux calls out sunnily, clambering out of the pool. "You okay, man? Sorry if Ingo got you." He shakes the water off his body, taking a few steps forward.

He doesn't notice it, but the bigger man has locked his muscles even more rigidly than when he got hit with the wave, hyper-aware of every inch that Hux closes between them.

Without warning, Hux snakes his arms forward again, with every intent of wrapping around some limb of Kylo Ren's and pulling him into the pool.

But that's not what happens.

Instead, Kylo swats him away in a fluid, easy movement—without even batting an eye or glancing in his direction.

And the effect is impressive.

Hux himself gets hurled at a frightening speed into the pool, as if he weighed nothing—in what is probably _the_ most brutal shot that reality TV has ever seen.

The ginger-haired man hits the water with a mighty, wet smack that sprays a tsunami of water in every direction, and he disappears underneath the surface, sinking to the bottom like a stone. Slowly, the water's exterior becomes completely still, with the ripples slowly ebbing and disappearing into a clear sheet of glass.

For a few moments, there is complete and utter silence.

And then the cameras are everywhere, zooming in on the pool, panning to the outright stunned faces of the other contestants, and even the field producers all swarming the scene at once.

The water begins to surge again not a few moments later, and then Hux breaks through the surface for air, hacking and coughing wildly while two producers immediately help pull him out of the water. More producers rush forward after that, armed with first-aid kits. They are a flurry of arms and hands and quick commands drowning out the rest of the contestants, still piled around the pool's edge and gawking.

"Breathe," one of the producers could be heard saying. "Deep breaths—can you breathe? How do you feel?"

"Are you hurt anywhere?" Another producer asks urgently as she hovers over him, shining a flashlight in Hux's eyes. Other people mill around them, some on phones, some insistently telling others to "go get Snoke".

"Owww," Hux whines, clutching his leg, and he reveals a giant scrape on his knee—where he must've scraped the pool's floor on his way down. The camera zooms in to the bloody injury with gleeful abandon, the shaky cinematography adding another layer of urgency.

In the distance, ambulance sirens begin to wail, and that seems to pull most of the contestants out of their shocked stupor.

"What the [BLEEP]?" Tritt sputters, and he climbs up over the pool's edge, dripping water over concrete.

Thanisson follows suit, peering anxiously at Hux, and then darting nervous glimpses back at Kylo.

The man in question, meanwhile, somehow manages to look just as stunned as everyone else. He drops a quick glance at his hand, the one that pushed Hux into the water, and then he looks up back at everyone else's angry and questioning stares. Kylo wets his lips, and he swallows with some difficulty.

"Are you _insane_?" Sol gapes, looking between Kylo and Hux wildly. "That was a little overboard, don'tcha think?"

"That wasn't supposed to happen," Kylo says, his voice strangely quiet.

"Yeah? Well, maybe you should've thought about that before you up and _punched him_ into the water," Tritt exclaims. A few feet away, slightly removed from the showdown, Hux can be heard crying out "owww" a few more times to the medic who is now attending him.

* * *

Cut to Finn, sitting in the video confessional room. "You know, do I think Hux was maybe being kind of a big baby about this?" He pauses, and then shakes his head, giving an amused snort when he pulls his hand away from his face.

"I mean, yeah. Totally. He went up to him first, not the other way around, and what did he _think_ was gonna happen when Kylo Ren was the size of a literal [BLEEP]ing mountain?"

* * *

The minutes have dragged by with everyone still watching with hushed, rapt attention, and Hux finally emerges from the back of an ambulance with an oversized white cast around his entire leg.

"This hurts like a [BLEEEEEEP]," Hux complains, hobbling along the path with two crutches wedged underneath his armpits. His friend, Tritt, rushes to support him.

"You're okay, buddy," he says, and the camera zooms in on Hux's pathetic expression.

* * *

Cut to Poe, with his face buried in his hands, shaking. "Someone please explain to me why this man got a whole[BLEEP] cast on his leg. Didn't he just scrape his knee?"

* * *

Cut to Finn, his hands clasped in front of his chin. His lips are pursed together in a flat line. "So did they, like." Pause. He takes a deep breath.

"When he got in that ambulance, did they like, tell him. 'You have two options. We can put a Band-Aid on it, or like. We can give you a cast.' And he just, like, said…'Great! I'll take the cast.' Is that what happened? Because if you tell me that's not what happened, I don't believe you."

* * *

Hux is still limping along with Tritt at his side, and the pair pass Finn and Poe on the way to seat the ginger-haired man down in a chair.

Finn and Poe exchange deadpan expressions, and the camera wheels over to capture the moment.

* * *

Cut back to Finn. "Heck no, I don't like Hux. I don't like Kylo either, but I like Hux even less. He always says the strangest [BLEEP]."

* * *

Flashback to Hux, at various moments throughout the house:

"Come on, now. Have _you_ ever seen a pretty feminist? I think not!" He gives Thanisson Reed a hearty slap on his back, jolting him completely.

"Don't you just feel embarrassed for people who come out and say they're against hunting?" Hux says, munching on a banana.

"Never trust a man that owns a cat."

* * *

Cut to Finn, still in the video confessional room. "So yeah, I don't like Hux." He throws out his hands in a wide gesture. "Sue me."

* * *

"You know, this was real stand-up behavior today, Kylo," Hux sneers, leaning back on his lawn chair as he rests his foot grandly in front of him. "Honestly, what would Rey think of all this? Do you think she would be impressed by you?"

The other contestants idling around the pool now draw in a collective breath, as they look rapidly back and forth between Hux and Kylo. They had begun restlessly shuffling around after the initial excitement had died down, but they stayed glued to the pool area since all of the producers seem to have gathered in this exact location.

Kylo, who has switched to sitting down on a nearby chair not ten feet away, looks up to meet his eyes. He jolts at the mention of Rey's name, and then he swivels his attention back to his hands.

"I don't care," he says finally. His voice is flat.

And it is perhaps that revelation, over every other dramatic thing that has occurred today, that reels in everyone's attention. They all stare at him, dumbfounded.

Kylo snaps his head up, seeming to recognize the weight of the silence. His ears burn with color, and then finally, he rises to his feet. Without another word, he stalks off.

* * *

Cut to Poe, sitting in the video confessional room, and he runs his hand over the stubble on his jaw. "Umm. I didn't think I would ever be the person to say this on the show, but. Is Kylo even here for the right reasons?"

* * *

Cut to Rumitar Shay. He appears distinctly uncomfortable. "I don't like to make hasty judgments, but I won't lie and say I'm not…concerned." He toys with the hem of his sleeve. "I think Rey is a really sweet girl, and she's definitely looking for her husband here. I don't know why Kylo is here, but…"

Rumi looks up, making eye contact with someone behind the camera, and he gives a small sigh. "But I think, strangely enough, she seems to like him? I mean, I don't know. She did give him the last group date rose."

* * *

Cut to Finn, jaw dropped open. "Why is he even still here? _How_? He's not trying to hide a damn thing!" He waves his hands around wildly. "How is Rey _not_ seeing this?"

* * *

Cut to Hux, who looks triumphant. "Told you," he simpers.

* * *

"Kylo!"

The dark-haired man goes still as a statue when he hears his name, and he turns around to the sight of Dopheld Mitaka almost barreling into his chest from trying to keep up with his long strides.

He jerks away at the last second.

Realizing he's finally caught up to the lumbering man, Mitaka doubles over at his waist to catch his breath. He had been trying to chase down Kylo Ren for the better part of the last minute. Hypothetically, he thinks, it would have been a lot easier to do so had the other man not been so single-mindedly determined to get away.

When he's breathing a little easier, Mitaka raises his head to look up at Kylo. The other man seems to be burning a hole in him with his gaze, impatient to get away. Again.

But he's not running off yet, and he _did_ stop. In the back of his mind, Mitaka recognizes that if Kylo had wanted to be rude, he wouldn't have responded to his name—even if it was clear that someone was trying to catch up with him.

Kylo is silent, waiting.

"You forgot this."

Mitaka produces the small paperback novel in his hands—old, worn, and dog-eared with sopping wet yellowed pages. He had picked it up as soon as he realized it had made a sudden appearance in the spot that Kylo vacated only moments earlier.

Unfortunately, he couldn't rescue the book from what appeared to be its untimely watery demise.

Genuine surprise flits across Kylo's face, and without preamble, he snatches it out of Mitaka's hands and clutches it to his person. The already-tiny book looks absolutely dwarfish in comparison to the rest of his body.

Mitaka vaguely wonders why he doesn't purchase a bigger copy, or invest in a hardcover edition.

He watches the bigger man huddle his body around the book, awed by the reaction to such a meager possession. Mitaka scratches the back of his head. "Sorry it got wet," he offers lamely.

Kylo slides a glance to him, and he doesn't immediately say anything. But he wets his lips, and his grip on the novel tightens. "Thank you," he says, quiet.

There is a ring of authenticity to his words that Mitaka can't ignore.

His eyes flicker to the worn copy of Jane Austen's _Persuasion_ that inspired today's events, and he almost finds the situation funny.

* * *

Cut to Kylo, sitting in the video confessional room. He doesn't speak, but in an unusual moment of editing, a producer's question could be heard from across the room: "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No," Kylo says. He looks at his hands.

* * *

It's later in the week when most of the men crowd around the living room, getting drunk off old fashioneds and swapping childhood stories with unrestrained hilarity.

The day is still young, the sun is bright, but that doesn't stop them from imbibing to their hearts' content.

"…and then I said to him, I don't know if you've ever driven a truck before. But you can't look off to the side _and_ stay in your own lane—"

"—right, you swerve—"

"—when you're looking out the damn window at other cars!"

This sets off a wave of uproarious laughter around the circle, and Tritt wipes a tear from his eye.

"The guy was so big and angry, I thought he was going to grab an axe and start murdering me on the spot," he says emphatically.

Erich Datoo, 30, scoffs at that. "Sounds familiar," he deadpans.

The rest of the men give pause, and they exchange knowing glances around the room.

"Did you see him earlier today?" Ingo says, lowering his voice.

The room becomes a flurry of conversation, everyone rushing to speak at once:

"Who could've missed it?"

"He was doing pull-ups near the swing—"

"—he just threw this harness on top of the framework and started going ham—"

"—it was like he was _trying_ to make himself look as enormous as possible!"

A brief silence, and then Hux shakes his head.

"Kylo is a cartoon character," he says. "His muscles are of cartoon-ish dimensions."

Sol Rivas nods along, with feeling. "Does a person's arms even need to be _that_ big?" he complains. "I mean, come on. They're huge. You can stop now, man."

"I think his goal in life is to, like, be able to squish people's heads like melons." That's Thanisson, with a dramatic shudder of his body.

Another lull in the conversation, and then Finn speaks up. "I saw him reading _Atlas Shrugged_ the other day." He pauses for effect. "For _fun_."

A surprised murmur ripples throughout the room, and then several heads nod, processing the new information.

"What's… _Atlas_ …what?" Hux frowns, waving around his glass tumbler with an unsteady hand.

" _Atlas Shrugged_ ," Ingo offers helpfully. "It's like, this really extreme book. It kinda talks about some things that are like…well, honestly, it's like a serial killer book."

"It's about serial killers?" The ginger-haired man echoes, aghast.

"No, no," Ingo rushes quickly to amend. "It's not _about_ serial killers. But it's kind of like, I guess, a book that you would think maybe serial killers would like. Probably." He shrugs his shoulders helplessly.

"Are we _sure_ that Kylo's not a serial killer?" Tritt says dryly, motioning to Hux's enormous leg cast. Everyone follows his gesture, and Sol gives the cast a sympathetic pat.

"There, there," he says.

"I'm just saying, if Kylo murders me in my sleep with his bare [BLEEP]ing hands—" Hux breaks off suddenly.

He pauses long enough that heads turn to see what he's looking at, and there is Kylo Ren, standing in the doorway for who knows how long.

Silence.

The cameras swivel to him, capturing him at a large, unflattering angle. In the frame, his arms look even more preposterously gigantic than usual. His hands aren't clasped in fists, but the cameras happily zoom in on them anyway, tracing the outline of their huge shape.

He shudders with some unnamed emotion, standing there, and for a few moments, the camera lingers on that picture of him. He gives a long, slow blink, and then he runs his— _huge_ , the zooming camera helpfully reminds audiences at home—hand through his hair, and then he turns around and disappears.

The room is still shell-shocked from being caught by the man himself, and it begins to recover only after a full minute has passed.

"Did anyone else," Hux says very slowly, "think they were going to die just now?"

**#TheBride hashtag on Twitter**

Hope @FlyingFlapjax  
Some of these men… 😬  
#TheyNeedAMother #NotAWife #TheBride  
[GIF of Raven Baxter from _That's So Raven_ saying, "Ya nasty!"]

Waffles 🧇 @spacewafflehou1  
Replying to @FlyingFlapjax  
*probably Snoke when he put the cast of #TheBride under the same roof*  
[video of a chef slowly placing a handful of crinkle-cut French fries into a saucepan, closing the lid, and backing away. The entire stove bursts into flames, and he ducks for cover.]

Laura J @thelivinglaura  
OK but why does Kylo look like he wants to murder you no matter where you move  
#TheBride  
[screenshot of Kylo at an angle that is framed like the _Mona Lisa_ ]

Moira ✨🪐 I'll riot with you @fulcrumstardust  
quick someone call the WAAAAmbulance for Hux  
#TheBride  
[photo of BBQ Becky on the phone]

Bronwyn @brownymix13  
Can we just talk about wet Kylo? Can we? Because OH MY GOD 🥵  
#TheBride  
[shaky phone video of a TV screen with a soaked Kylo]

Rey has been busy.

She delayed sending over date cards to the mansion where she knows the men are probably waiting for her, but it's for entirely related, Snoke-approved reasons.

Her best friend, Rose Tico, is here.

She could hardly believe it when the producers made the big reveal after leading her outside, revealing the gorgeous Asian girl standing between the flora. Rey had made an otherworldly screech, matched only by the sound coming out of Rose's mouth, and they had rushed to hug each other while screaming obscenities wrapped up in a greeting.

"Hello, you bad [BLEEEP], how the [BLEEP] are you doing?" Rose sniffled, petting Rey's hair.

"Shut up, you [BLEEEP], you first," Rey insisted. "You already know how I'm doing!"

The cameras panned back and forth between the two women, capturing the exchange with careful interest. After all, the show didn't usually bring in people from the Bride's hometown during the early weeks—but then again, Rose wasn't _really_ from Rey's hometown.

Rose had laughed at her. "That's not true, silly. I want to hear all about it from your own mouth."

And so, Rey passed the first few days of the third week with Rose, having tea and catching up on everything there was to know about anything. They had also discussed the men at great length during the first day, seated in a quaint hipster café.

"So, who are your frontrunners?" Rose asked.

The other girl had eyed her cup of jasmine tea with an inordinate amount of attention, trying her best not to glance off to the side. Rey could tell she wasn't used to having the cameras trained on her, since she never went on _The Groom_ like Rey did.

"Well, I really like Poe Dameron, for starters," Rey said, nursing the teacup in her hands.

"Uh-huh. Tell me about him," Rose prompted, leaning closer. At that moment, she seemed to forget about the cameras.

"Well, he's tall, dark, and handsome. He's a pilot." Rey had learned that about him during the first cocktail party, right before she had given him the First Impression Rose.

The other girl wrinkled her nose. "Like Cassian?"

"Yes. I mean, no, not like— _oh_ , don't make that face at me, Rose. He's not the same," Rey said indignantly.

"Uh-huh." Rose swirled the tea around in her cup, reserving judgment. Rey always hated it when she did that. She wished that her friend would just say what she was thinking, but that wasn't Rose's way. "Who else?"

"There's also Rumi," Rey told her.

"And he is?"

"He's from Washington, D.C. Super handsome, very intense eyebrows. Would probably make excellent babies," Rey informed the other girl, and she watched Rose's mouth quirk up in a smile.

"Of course," Rose said easily. "That's important, after all."

"Very important." Rey would be lying if she said she wasn't searching for the father of her children.

"Anyone else?"

"Finn," Rey said automatically.

"Ooh," Rose breathed, delighted. "Tell me about him."

"You like him?"

"I liked the look of him when I saw him, yeah. How're things going with him?"

"Things are going great," Rey said honestly. "He's a super funny guy, super handsome, and I think we get along so well. To be frank, all of these blokes are wonderful, and I'm lucky to have them."

Rose had studied her carefully then. "But?"

"I'm sorry?"

"There's something else."

"What?"

"Some _one_ else?"

"What? No," Rey said, astounded. "What are you talking about?"

"I don't know," Rose said lightly, shrugging. "You have your 'but' face on."

"My _what_?"

"[BLEEEP], I know you," the other girl said, dismissing the outraged look on her face with a brisk wave of her hand. "So who is it? Who are your other frontrunners? You have more?"

"I don't—those are my frontrunners."

" _Rey_." Rose's voice was patient, but shrewd.

Rey pursed her mouth into a thin line. "Okay, fine. There's another. I mean, not really. I mean, he's not—I don't really know."

"Tell me about him," Rose insisted. "He's a frontrunner?"

"No," Rey said, a little too quickly. But then she bit her lip. "I don't know what he is. I'm scared, honestly."

"Why are you scared?" Rose asked, folding her hands together in front of her chin.

There was a long silence before she answered, and Rey was only too aware how unusual that was during a conversation between the two of them. "I'm scared because I don't know why he's here," she said finally. "I don't think he's here for me."

Silence.

Rose tipped her head, appraising her. "But you like him?" she asked. Her voice was gentle.

"I—I don't—there's something about him," Rey confessed. "It's…he's interesting. I think…sometimes, I think he's a little…cute."

Rose reeled back, blinking rapidly, and Rey swiveled her attention to her friend. "What?" she asked, alarmed.

"Sorry. That's just a strange word, is all," Rose said, tapping her teacup idly. "I don't think you've ever used the word 'cute' about someone you were interested in before."

"Is that…a bad thing? A good thing?"

"I don't know what it is," her friend told her honestly. "I don't have precedence for this in your romantic dealings to have an accurate opinion."

"Huh." Rey tried to think about her old boyfriends, but her mind drew a blank. If what Rose was saying was true, then Rey wasn't really sure what to make of it, either.

"So? Who is he?"

"Hm? Oh, it's…Kylo. Kylo Ren?" Rey dropped her voice to a whisper, knowing it wouldn't do any good for the mics or cameras, but it made her feel a little better.

Rose gaped at her.

"Okay. I know what you're thinking. Stop— _Rose_. I know."

" _Rey_."

" _I know_ ," Rey whined.

"No, I mean— _cute_? I've been watching, and I don't think he's cracked a smile the entire time he's been on-screen!"

"I know, but—"

"He's not your type. _At all_."

"I—"

"And I know this, because who's your Tinder buddy? Who do you always swipe with on our living room couch? I'm always having to convince you to swipe right at all!"

"I know."

"Rey, he is a mammoth of a man, and not even in the friendly giant kind of way. He—wasn't he the guy who smashed a wine glass over someone trying to talk to him?"

"It was a tumbler, actually—"

"— _really_ not the point, Rey—" Rose was looking at her, concerned.

"—and I don't know. I haven't really gotten the chance to talk to him about any of that yet, yeah, and I know I need to. It's on the list of things to do." Rey chewed on her lower lip, a bad habit that she had never really gotten rid of since childhood. "But on our group date, he seemed—I don't know. There was something about him."

More silence.

"I thought you only gave him that rose on the last group date because you had to," Rose said finally. "Like, someone told you to do it. For drama."

"Actually, no." Pause. "That was me."

A few more beats pass.

Rose stared at her, unconvinced. " _Cute_?"

"He's—I think he's actually gentler than you would think," Rey tried to explain.

The silence stretched on. Rose just continued to stare, seeming to consider her.

Finally, the dark-haired girl unwound her arms from the tight position she'd clasped herself in, and she gave a big sigh.

"Alright," she said. "Kylo Ren. I'll give him a chance."

The first group date of the week arrives at last.

Rey is teeming with nervous energy—not that she really understands why. Maybe it's the prospect of her best friend about to meet everyone.

But on Thursday morning, the date card whisks nine of the men off in golf carts to a bright, grassy clearing on the Entourage estate, far removed from the main mansion. The contestants dismount from the vehicles in disparate numbers, breaking off into a sprint when they spot the Bride waving at them from her perch on the lawn.

"REY!" Finn hollers, and he rushes over to grip her in a giant bear hug. Rey giggles, patting his arm and returning the embrace. A staggered chorus echoes her name behind him, each of them running up to her to drop kisses on her cheek or clasp her in their arms.

One by one, Rey greets each of her dates, and when she's done, she pulls back from them to study the group of men with a bright, eager-eyed expression.

Today, the date consists of Finn, Ingo, Erich, Rumi, Hux, Tritt, Sol, Mitaka, and of course—Kylo.

"I have a special surprise for you today," Rey says, her whole face glowing.

Some of the men crane their necks to peer around her person, noticing the large makeshift outdoor stage and the rows of chairs arranged in front.

Rey takes a step to her right, revealing a short, feminine figure. "This is Rose," she says happily, gesturing to the cute, round-faced Asian girl. "My best friend from home. She came all the way out here today to meet you guys!"

The girl in question raises her hand in a small wave, eyes flickering to the cameras beyond and then back again. "Hello, everyone," Rose chirps. "I've been friends with Rey for a super long time, so since…what? How long has it been now—?"

"—thirteen years, how could you forget our friendaversary—"

"—right, it's been a long time! Sorry, thirteen years. Basically, since we were pre-teens, so I love her to bits and pieces, and I want her to be happy more than anyone," Rose says fondly, shooting a look to the Bride. "I've been dying to meet all of you, and see who's just right for my bosom buddy!'"

"Rose's opinion means the world to me," Rey adds. "So today will be sort of like a hometown date, except you just have to meet one person."

A murmur of excitement ripples through the group, and several of the men warmly greet the other girl in a smattering of responses:

"Hi, Rose!"

"Hello, Rose!"

"Nice to meet you, Rose!"

Rose waves some more, beaming at the semicircle of contestants, but her smile falters when her gaze snags on one man standing at the end of the line. Warily, she glances back at Rey, but then she clears her throat and continues.

"Compatibility is, of course, important to a successful relationship. You've all had a little time now to get to know Rey, and whether or not you've been paying attention determines how well you do in today's group date," Rose announces.

With a grand flourish, she gestures to the sprawling stage behind her. The platform itself is furnished to look like a cozy, comfortable living room, complete with a pair of armchairs positioned off-center.

"So now it's my turn to get to know _you_ , and I'll get to see for myself just how compatible Rey is with each of you. Today, I'll be hosting your group date for a challenge game!" Rose declares.

The cameras zoom in on a circular desk on the other side of the armchairs, and James Snoke himself gives a leisurely wave from where he's seated. "Hello, boys! It's good to see you," he calls out. There's an empty chair next to him—presumably for Rose.

"I'll be joined by Snoke as my co-host. We'll ask each man to come forward and sit down with Rey in the hot seat," Rose says, motioning to the armchairs. "You'll each get a whiteboard and marker"—she points, and Snoke helpfully holds up the items—"and we'll ask you a series of questions about each other. One person will write down what they think the answer is, and the person in question will write down what the correct answer is.

"At the end, the couple with the most correct answers will be crowned _the_ Power Couple of the season!" Rose finishes triumphantly, throwing out jazz hands. "Are we ready?"

During her explanation, some of the men have been elbowing each other and waggling their eyebrows, while other men still looked nervous. After all, not everyone has had an equal amount of time with Rey, and some of them will obviously have the upper hand. But now, they break out in a good-natured, loud cheer for the cameras.

"Let's _GO!_ "

Rey is impressed with the creativity of some of the answers, if nothing else.

Like when Tritt got asked, "Tritt, what do you think is Rey's favorite pizza topping?", and when he turned his whiteboard, he had written in his chicken scratch handwriting: "meat", with a quick doodle of an eggplant emoji next to his answer.

(Actually, she isn't sure if she's charmed or grossed out by that one.)

Or when Ingo had the question, "What famous painting would Rey choose to hang in her living room?", and he revealed his answer as "The Starry Lisa" because he couldn't decide between _Starry Night_ and _Mona Lisa_ , and he hoped that at least one of those answers had been correct.

But Rey had already anticipated that some of the questions about her would be too obscure for anyone to come up with the correct answers, and she's right in that respect.

On the other hand, she is also stunned by the sheer amount of details that some of the men _do_ remember about her, and it gets to the point where there are several contestants poised to win the entire game.

Finn, of course, is no surprise to her. Sol, who she actually _is_ surprised by. Mitaka, who is patient and attentive and of course he remembered the little things. And Rumi is just a question shy of being tied with everyone else.

She's actually the weak point in the whole game, when it's her turn to answer questions about them. To be fair, she is struggling to produce details about nine different men in her life at once, but Rey thinks it's no excuse.

Especially when she answered "zero" when she got asked how many siblings Rumi had—because in her head, it had made _sense_ that he was an only child like her. As it turns out, he had…

"Five," he announces with a sympathetic grin. "My parents always wanted a big family."

Rey groans dramatically. "I'm absolute rubbish," she whines to him, because she can actually recall him telling her that exact factoid on a previous date. "I don't know why you haven't dumped me already!"

She is still a little embarrassed about that when she sits down with Kylo Ren in the hot seat, and she fidgets nervously in her chair. Maybe Rey is being paranoid, but she swears she can _feel_ Rose's deeply assessing gaze run over the both of them.

Rey has the odd sensation that she is nine years old again, sitting in an elementary school classroom and desperate to impress her teacher.

She doesn't know why, but she _wants_ Rose to like him.

"Alright, Kylo Ren," Rose says, drawing out his name so that it sounds like seven syllables instead of three. _Great_ , Rey thinks. Subtle. "Let's start off with a nice, easy question."

But all of a sudden, in that exact moment, a horrible truth dawns on Rey. She was prepared to feel relieved at Rose's pronouncement, but she doesn't. She doesn't feel relieved at all.

That's because, Rey realizes, she has never actually had a proper conversation with Kylo Ren.

She knows nothing about him.

He knows nothing about her.

 _Shit_. This is going to be an unmitigated disaster.

Rey's mind is spiraling toward a million different scenarios at once, and she doesn't pay attention to where she's looking at until she accidentally makes eye contact with him. _Shit_ , she thinks again. Rey just as quickly drops her gaze back to her lap.

Wait.

Did she just make it even worse by looking away?

Rey forces herself to look up again, but he, too, is looking at his hands now.

"Kylo, what's Rey's favorite color?" Rose asks.

Her question falls upon them like the clanging of a death toll, and Rey can hear the game show timer begin to tick off the seconds in the background.

She glances at Kylo again, and then she chews on her lower lip, trying to quiet the sound of her thrumming heartbeat. Everyone always thinks her favorite color is yellow, just because of her name. It's the easiest guess, if one had no idea.

For a brief, impulsive moment, Rey considers scribbling down "yellow" just to throw Kylo a boon. But in the next moment, she remembers who is sitting at the table. Hosting the whole thing.

She of Best Friend Status, who _definitely_ knows what Rey's real favorite color is.

Rey lets out a small sigh, and she scribbles down her answer. When she looks up, Kylo's hand has already stilled over his whiteboard, and he's looking off into the distance, distracted.

"Alright, time's up! Show me your answers," Rose says in a singsong voice, clutching the microphone. "Kylo, what'd you say?"

The huge, lumbering man turns to look at her. Without a word, he flips his whiteboard around.

Rey's heart sinks to her stomach.

 _Black_.

That was his answer. That was what he'd written down.

Rose is uncharacteristically silent, staring at him for several moments too long. Rey also doesn't speak, and the rest of the contestants at the foot of the stage must notice the awkwardness, because Hux eventually hollers: " _Well?_ Did he get it right or not?"

Rey swallows hard. She turns her whiteboard around, not trusting herself to speak. _Black_. That, too, was what she had written.

She makes eye contact with him again then, and she doesn't quite understand the expression in his eyes.

"Black?" Snoke says curiously, but he seems pleased with this development. "Your favorite color is black, Rey?"

"Uh, yeah," Rey tugs at the collar of her shirt, uncomfortable. "I actually went through quite a goth phase when I was younger. Goth, punk, whatever you want to call it. Emo."

But she can't tear her eyes away from Kylo Ren, who hasn't said a word, to her or any of them since the game started. He simply sits there, looking at her.

"Why'd you say black?" Rose says suddenly, and heads spin to look at her, because this is new. As the host, she has yet to grill any of the contestants about their choices in answers, mostly taking them at face value for funny guesses, lucky coincidences, or good memory.

But Rey realizes with a start that Rose has been watching _The Bride_ , and Rey has never had a conversation with Kylo where she told him her favorite color. This was not something he'd learned about her from herself.

Kylo slides Rose a glance, and he works his throat slowly. "I just," he says carefully, "think she likes dark colors."

Rey can feel the attention in the room turning to her, eyes glued to the bright, pastel sundress that she wears today. As the Bride, she has a certain color palette that she's been asked to stick to for day wear, so she's just following the rules of her contract.

"Right," Rose says slowly. Another pause, and then: "Alright, then! That's a point to Kylo and Rey. Next question. Snoke?"

Snoke studies Kylo with careful consideration, and then he shuffles the index cards in front of him with purpose. He lays his choice on top of the pile, and then he leans into the microphone. "Rey, how many kids does Kylo want?"

Rey is relieved.

This question is easy, and maybe she can make it seem like she's talked to Kylo more than once, after all. She chances a quick glimpse at Kylo, taking in his profile: the rigid set of his chin, the unforgiving slope of his mouth.

She writes down her answer without a second thought, and when asked, she lifts her whiteboard into the air with more confidence than she'd like to admit. _Zero_.

"Kylo?" Snoke prompts, motioning with his hand.

Kylo's mouth is pressed in a flat line when he reveals his answer. _Two_.

Rey looks at him with surprise. He wanted kids?

But Kylo is looking back at her, with a similar, but not quite the same, expression. There's something else in his eyes, too. Something she can't name. It looks a little like _hurt_.

Rey is so confused, she rips her gaze away from him without letting herself think too hard about it. The back of neck feels hot, and she places her hand there, awkward. A few beats pass, and she notices that Rose is looking at her sympathetically.

When it's Kylo's turn again, he answers the question, "What is Rey's go-to comfort food?" with _PBJ_.

It is, again, correct.

Her favorite comfort food _is_ peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but Rey can't wrap her brain around how he could have possibly guessed that.

It makes Rey feel even worse when she answers, "What was Kylo's childhood dream job?" with _movie star_ and his answer was, in fact, _politician_.

And for the rest of the game, she finds that she can't make eye contact with him anymore, even when she's trying. And at one point, she tries _really_ hard. But he doesn't look back, ever.

In the end, she misses almost every question about him. Her only saving grace was when she correctly answered, "What is Kylo's biggest pet peeve?" with _handsy people_ , and he had written down _touching_.

He, in turn, only misses two about her: "What genre of music does Rey listen to most often?" and "What is Rey's favorite drink?"

She listens to indie and synthpop a lot these days, not _rock_ , and she likes to drink margaritas on the weekends, not so much _coke_. Although, she did used to really enjoy knocking back bottles of Coca-Cola, too, before her father probably ruined it for her for life.

Their final score is ludicrously high.

It is so high, in fact, that they win.

The reaction from the other contestants is abysmal. The men are all thin, narrow expressions and crossed arms—except for dear Mitaka, who seems to give them an encouraging smile while Kylo and Rey are being crowned with cheap plastic crowns and paper sashes.

"Hashtag power couple," Rose proclaims them, straightening the crown on Rey's head with a grin, and she even turns her winsome smile on Kylo.

But Kylo is extremely quiet, and he still won't look Rey in the eye, at all.

Rey's stomach turns, the thin plastic on her head somehow feeling like a burdensome weight.

During the night portion of the date, she goes to him.

They're all located at a ritzy hotel parlor this time, and underneath the glittering chandeliers, Rey finds that Kylo continues to avoid her eyes—even when she addresses him by name. He answers her question politely while they sit with the group, but it seems that eye contact is out of the question.

After that, she gets inundated by requests from men wanting to speak with her, taking what time they can get with her, just the way it's supposed to be.

But Rey only gets through three conversations, not a single one of them initiated by Kylo, when she notices the man himself slipping down the staircase in the corner of her eye. Her mind fritzes— _where is he going?_ And before she knows it, she is no longer paying attention to a single word that the man next to her is even saying anymore.

She knows it's not the most proper way to end a conversation, but she holds up a hand and cuts Ingo off short. "I'm so sorry," she says helplessly, a tremor to her voice, "but I have to go do something. I'll be back."

With that, she picks up the hem of her glittering black evening gown, and she races down the stairs as fast as she could carry herself.

Rey catches up with him in the hallway, where he walks with so much purpose that it feels like he's running from something.

"Kylo!" she calls breathlessly.

He stills, almost with inhuman ability. But he doesn't turn around.

"Kylo," Rey says, her voice thick with some strange emotion. "Look at me."

They both stand there like that, ten feet apart and unmoving.

Very slowly, as slow as she's ever seen him, he rotates his body to face her. He swallows a lump in his throat, almost as if in some great effort to speak, but his lips don't move. He blinks his huge, dark eyes at her.

"Why won't you look at me?" she asks, so softly.

He almost looks like a doe, standing there like that. "I am looking at you," Kylo whispers finally.

" _Now_ ," Rey insists, somehow finding the courage to make her voice work. "Earlier, you wouldn't. When we were…answering questions. Why?"

Kylo continues to stand there, blinking.

Silence.

"This was a mistake." His voice is so, so small.

It takes her a moment to process his words. Rey is alarmed. "What was a mistake?"

"Coming here. All of it." Finally, finally, she is able to place a word to his emotion—and Kylo looks _wrecked_. "I need to leave. I need to go home. I'm sorry." The words are bursting forth from him like a ruptured dam, quicker than she's ever heard him speak.

He's already pulling away, already turning around again, and his legs are trying to move away.

 _He needs to what_?

Her brain short-circuits, and she moves entirely on instinct. Rey doesn't think through her actions, or consider what she's doing, or even plan about what might happen after.

She lunges forward, sliding her hand into his, and the warmth of the skin contact is so shocking that he snaps his head back to look at her. But Rey is still moving, still chasing him when she cups his face in her hand like he's a strange, delicate bird.

It's his eyes—the heavy, black eyes that look so shiny and wet as they're staring back at her, so confused and vulnerable—that tip the final scale.

Her hand moves to his sleeve, giving it a light tug. He follows with boneless resistance, his eyes tracing each of her movements with absolute bewilderment, and she pulls him down toward her.

Her lips land on his full, generous mouth.

And she presses against him in the softest kiss.

**#TheBride hashtag on Twitter**

e⭐ @barbieeex  
Hot take: Finn deserved that win over Kylo due to actually having spoken to #TheBride  
[image of Daenerys Targaryen from _Game of Thrones_ smiling]

DeeDee @desireedukes  
frfr is this power couple thing a joke? because uhhh sis #ThatAintIt  
#TheBride

𝔤𝔞𝔟𝔯𝔦𝔢𝔩𝔩𝔢. @watrbend  
ok……I actually like Kylo with Rey?? they have some SERIOUS chemistry!!! 🥵😩  
#powercouple #TheBride

s a v a n n a h @savannahhhthegr8  
what the actual fuck did i just watch  
#TheBride  
[low quality screenshot of Rey kissing Kylo]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PHEEEEW. Aaaand, we are done—for Week 3, Part 1. Yep, Week 3 will be multiple parts! It wasn't my intention when I started writing, but when I was 5k words in and no one had even been on a single date yet, I knew it needed to be broken up.
> 
> I want to give a huge, huge shout-out to my awesome beta, [Flyingflapjack](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22628110)! She's been absolutely key in getting this update out as soon as I did. I would've been so lost without her, and it would've probably taken another week longer at least. (She also ghost-wrote most of the social media posts.)
> 
> Another shout-out to the Reylo Writing Den, who provided me with immeasurable moral support throughout the labor of this chapter. Most of these Twitter handles are fake, but I used some real ones throughout the chapter, and they're real people you can follow from the Reylo Writing Den! 👀
> 
> As always, kudos and comments are love, life, and my bloodstream, so if you enjoyed this chapter or have any thoughts at all, I would love to hear from you! Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you guys again in the next update.
> 
> Follow me on [tumblr](http://laurarobin.tumblr.com) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/thelivinglaura)!


	4. Week 3, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first group date from Week 3 continues. Rey finds herself ensconced in drama. Kylo faces the consequences of his actions. Rey gives out the group date rose, and Twitter reacts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>    
> 

He's big, and warm, and solid.

She only presses her lips against his for a brief moment, and it all feels so perfectly natural—until she hears his breath audibly catch in his throat. His body shudders underneath her hands, and Rey's eyes flutter open.

She draws back, and her palms slowly fall to her sides.

With a sudden lurch, he pulls away in a belated movement, breathless and wild-eyed. He looks stricken, and he just stares and stares at her.

Her brain is finally stuttering and catching up with her, and Rey feels her face suffused with heat.

"I'm sorry," she croaks out, because that's all she can think of to say. This man hates being touched, and she just kissed him. Why did she kiss him? She feels like a huge, blithering idiot.

He stares at her, his mouth slightly ajar as if he wants to say something, but then he closes it again like he doesn't know what.

The silence stretches between them, agonizingly long, and he drops his gaze, rubbing a hand over his jaw.

"What—why did you do that?" Kylo finally whispers to his feet.

He's not looking at her again.

Rey wants to disappear into the floor.

"I—I'm sorry, I just—sorry—" And she starts backing away, one step, and then another step, every word that she had before this, every important thing she wanted to say to him flying out of her head.

That was so stupid, so impulsive. Why _did_ she do that?

"—that is, if you didn't want to—" She chokes off her own words, drowning in embarrassment. She needs to leave before she makes a bigger fool out of herself, before she physically mauls him again in other ways she didn't know that she was capable of, or something else worse.

Could there even be worse than this?

Kylo snaps his head up, startled, and a peculiar expression twists his face.

Rey can't really name what she sees in it, but she's not really trying to, either. She's just trying to get away. Except she sees him moving before she really has a chance to process it.

She doesn't really get it, not at first.

Not until he reaches out, his enormous hand swallowing her own. It's a visceral image that sends a strange thrill shooting through her, and her eyes jerkily track the movement with disbelief.

And somehow, she's kissing him again.

_What?_

She can barely keep up, barely process the new information charging her senses all at once: the way his mouth slants over hers, the sudden, gentle press of his lips, the tentative breath he holds against her face. He has to dip his head far down to meet her, arching his back in a way that can't be comfortable, she thinks with astonishment—but he doesn't seem to notice.

Rey should close her eyes.

She knows this, and yet she doesn't, still too stunned to move a single muscle.

Her wide gaze traces the silhouette of him—his large neck, broad shoulders, immense arms, and she finds herself awed by the tightly leashed power around him. He huddles over her tiny frame like he is cradling something fragile and precious, like she is porcelain, like he's apologizing for the massive breadth of his body. It makes her feel unerringly _feminine_.

A strange, hot feeling swells in her stomach.

Her eyes flicker shut. She breathes through her nose, detecting the familiar earthy scent of him, cedar and pine mingling together, and she makes up her mind all at once.

To hell with it.

Rey surges up to meet his lips, stretching high on her tiptoes, and she molds herself to his chest until she fits him like a glove. After another moment's breath, she brings her hand up to his face, following some wild instinct to bring him closer. She is unsure about that part—regrets it in the next moment, nearly pulls it away again—but his hand lands on top of her own, and she decides to keep it there.

His lips are surprisingly soft. And so, so easy to kiss.

She feels like she could kiss him all damn day.

At first, their joining together is clumsy, uncertain, but it slowly blurs into something a little more heated, a little more wild as they relax into the newness.

Whenever he seems to lift his head even slightly—maybe readjusting the crick in his neck—she chases him, practically climbing him until he relents and bends his head back down to that strained, half-mast position that must be so uncomfortable for him.

She doesn't really care.

Thankfully, neither does he.

At one point, she feels his tongue swipe against the seam of her lips. Maybe it was an accident. She's not really sure, but she opens for him anyway. When she does, he grows very still underneath her, almost like he hadn't expected her to.

She nudges him closer to her, spurring him on. It takes a few moments, but at last, he seems convinced enough to delve in.

The first slide of his tongue against hers feels like an electric shock. They both freeze, and she dimly wonders, somehow, if he felt it too. But she gives his tongue another stroke, to implore him to keep going, and he thaws. He works his mouth over hers, cautious at first, but then he is licking her, gliding and tasting until her legs tremble with heaviness. Her fingers work their way into his hair, grappling for an anchor underneath him.

Rey thinks she could melt into the floor if he wasn't completely holding her up.

She makes a breathless little whimper, a completely embarrassing sound.

She would've ignored it and pretended like it didn't happen, because she's _never_ made that kind of sound before as long as she's been alive—and certainly not while kissing. Except she feels the moment he falters against her—like _he_ doesn't know how to ignore that sound she just made.

That's fair.

She should apologize for the sound.

Rey is already mid-way through opening her eyes, but abruptly, the hand at her hip tightens. Just a fraction, but enough for her to notice. She feels the small huff that he makes, right before he brings her closer to him, and he suddenly flicks his tongue out in a smooth, rolling motion in her mouth.

She makes another sound—a small, surprised one, but it's colored with something that sounds suspiciously like a moan. Rey wants to kick herself. Who even is she, right now?

But his chest rumbles underneath her, somehow very pleased with himself, and she opens her eyes to look at him. As it turns out, his own eyes are already open, and he only returns her gaze with a bold, careful stare.

Something about the look is so attractive, she feels her body twisting and tightening in all the right places.

Rey clenches her grip in his hair, and she presses against his mouth in another searing kiss. When he moves forward to meet her, she sinks her teeth into his plush bottom lip.

He jolts, startled, and it's her turn to be very satisfied.

She knows his eyes are open again, watching her, but she refuses to entertain that nonsense when they could be _kissing_ right now. So she peppers him with small little kisses, urgent and demanding, until he gives another little huff, relenting again as he arches his back more distinctly to indulge her.

But Rey doesn't stop her onslaught on his mouth, not until she's sure she's distracted all the thinking thoughts out of his head—when he reaches for her again with his stupidly big hands and splays them across her lower back. Right above the curve of her ass.

She can't help it. She lets out another little sound.

This time, she can feel him smile, his teeth momentarily preventing her from his mouth again.

Rey squirms underneath him, absolutely impatient, and she's not sorry to say she attacks his mouth until she feels his tongue softly stroking against hers again.

The kiss grows deeper, harder.

Their mouths war, a clash of lips and tongues and teeth clicking against each other, and she feels so hot, like she's burning alive from the blistering heat he gives off. The man is a goddamned furnace. He could power his own solar system if he wanted to, she thinks to herself dazedly.

She clutches at him anyway, and her hands are pawing at his forearms now, fighting for purchase as she feels her legs growing wobbly on their tiptoes. He's practically branding her with his heat, but she doesn't care, because she just wants to keep kissing him forever.

When his tongue does another rolling, pulsing motion that she discovers she really likes, it's not a sound that escapes her this time.

Her hips are the shameless traitor, jerking up against him in a slight, involuntary movement.

Kylo finally tears away from her with a sharp grunt.

He falls back, practically shooting away until there's some respectable distance between them. His breathing is ragged, and he stares at her wide, dark eyes, pupils blown.

Rey looks back at him, her heart hammering violently between her ribcage. There is more silence between them. She drags in great lungfuls of air, chest heaving up and down since she hasn't taken a real breath in minutes.

 _Shit_.

Slowly, she starts to remember herself. She's the _Bride_ , for heaven's sake. _Shit shit shit._ The feeling of embarrassment is swift and unforgiving, and Rey knows the moment her face starts to color, because she can also see his face tightening strangely across from her.

Her stomach roils, and she vaguely wonders if the cameras have followed her here.

They probably did.

Rey hasn't seen a single crew member this entire time, but that means nothing.

For some reason, she really wishes that it hadn't happened like this, that they weren't being televised, that she knew maybe even more than one thing about him right now, and maybe that she had met him differently. In a different time, in a different place.

She thinks that it would be easier, if she had.

Maybe she wouldn't be here at all.

But that's not how things turned out, so Rey says instead now, "Don't go." Her throat feels tight, so she adds, in a much smaller voice: "Please."

She blinks at him, hoping it's enough. Sure, the original plan hadn't been _kiss the desire to leave out of him_ , but she wants to get to know him. Properly this time, maybe.

Rey can only hope he wants the same.

She waits, the silence unbearable.

Across from her, he gives a slight, tense jerk of his head. He doesn't say anything, not at first. At last, he works his throat enough to choke out a single word in a soft, hoarse voice.

"Okay."

* * *

Cut to Ingo, in a makeshift video confessional room. He gapes at the camera, his mouth dropped in a big "O". He doesn't say anything, just continues to stare dumbly at the camera. The clip lasts for several, long seconds.

* * *

Finn frowns, squinting at the figure who shuffles in through the entrance of the parlor.

It's Ingo Salik, with his body slumped over and looking so defeated that he doesn't even bother to lift his head or announce his presence.

His sulking frame slowly ambles over, and Finn makes an urgent gesture to the others, getting their attention. When they look at him, he jerks his chin in the direction of the younger man. Ingo is usually good-natured, laidback, and perfectly cheerful, so the sight of him looking so unhappy is bizarre enough that it abruptly stops the closest conversation.

The rest of the room quickly descends into silence.

Ingo collapses into an adjacent armchair without a word, and the men watch him with rapt attention. They give each other pointed glances, because they know that Ingo had been off with Rey—but it doesn't look like it went well.

Erich Datoo, 30, clears his throat. "So, Ingo," he begins, awkward. "Uh, how did your—um, talk with Rey? Go?"

Ingo doesn't look at him. He barely reacts to Erich's question. Instead, he droops in his chair, sinking so low that his arms hang at his sides.

Erich looks toward the others, and Tritt gives a small shrug. They all have a pretty good idea of a conversation that might have caused Ingo's distress.

This time, Finn leans forward, trying his luck. "Ingo? Buddy?" he says, bright and upbeat. "What'd you and Rey talk about?"

Ingo grunts, and he flops his hand in the air like a distressed seahorse.

"Was it—did cleaning come up?" Finn asks, coming over to squat next to him in the chair. He gives him a small, sympathetic pat on the back. "Because you know, it's alright. You don't have to stress over it too much. It really isn't so bad—"

"Wait, what?" Ingo interrupts, pulling his head up to look at Finn. "We didn't talk about anything like that."

"Oh." Finn blinks.

"What makes you think that's what we talked about?" Ingo asks, and he is genuinely bewildered.

There is a heavy, pregnant pause. Some of the men shuffle around the couch, and Rumi busies himself with fluffing a pillow.

"Um…no reason," Finn says vaguely. He clears his throat again. "So, um, what did you guys talk about, then?"

"Well—" Ingo exhales, running his hand through his hair. He looks pointedly at his lap. "At first, we were talking about Captain America. We bonded over our favorite movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and we were having a really great time."

Finn gives an encouraging nod. "Right."

"But then Kylo—"

"What?" Finn says, reeling back.

"What?"

Finn is flabbergasted. " _Kylo_?"

The rest of the room reacts with similar astonishment—because what is Kylo doing around Ingo and Rey? Everyone knows that it was Ingo's turn to spend one-on-one time with her.

Except when Finn stops to think about it, he realizes that he hasn't seen Kylo in a while. Not since the beginning of the night, when Rey thanked them all for their time. Shortly after that, she started going off with each of them for one-on-one conversations, and Kylo disappeared from the room.

Finn's jaw tightens, slow understanding creeping in.

"Oh—yeah, I'm getting to that part," Ingo says, and he takes a deep breath.

The other men in the room are leaned all the way in, no longer bothering to disguise their interest. Even Sol, who had been clutching a whole deli platter to his person, sets down the crystal tray with a delicate clink.

"So Kylo walks by, I guess, and he kinda gives Rey this whole 'come hither' look—"

"Wait," Mitaka blurts out, "you saw Kylo give Rey a 'come hither' look?"

The men whip their heads back and forth, and they fix their eyes on Ingo, waiting with bated breath. Ingo scratches the back of his head, considering. "I mean, no, but it's pretty obvious that he did because of what happened next," he eventually says.

"What happened next?" Tritt urges, eyes round like saucers.

"So he kinda tells Rey to _come here_ , and then he goes down the stairs, and Rey's too nice to tell him off—" Ingo says unsteadily. "—so she tells me to hold up, while she goes and talks to him—"

"No way," Rumi breathes, not daring to even blink. "He made her leave you?"

"Yeah, that's kind of what ended up happening." Ingo gives a little shrug. "So I guess I'm supposed to wait—and I did, at first—but they were gone for a hot second, so I ended up following them down the stairs." He cuts off at this point, and he blinks off into the distance.

Everyone waits, but he doesn't continue.

" _Well_?" Sol demands, throwing his hands in the air. "What happened? What did you see?"

"He—" Ingo gives a big sigh, ruffling his hair like he doesn't really know what to say. "I saw him _pulling_ her to him, like, with his huge[BLEEP] arms. And, well—he kissed her."

There is a prolonged, stunned silence.

No one speaks, or moves, or even breathes. Everyone is just staring at Ingo, as if they expect him to say something else that would give his previous words a different meaning.

Finally—

"He _WHAT_?" Tritt yells, a thunderous expression slowly forming on his face.

Some more silence.

"How could he—the _nerve_ —" Sol is beside himself, sputtering over his words.

Rumi just sits there, his eyes no longer on Ingo. He simply looks shocked.

"He _forced_ her to kiss him?" Mitaka asks, carefully.

"I mean, that's sure what it looked like from where I stood." Ingo gives another awkward shrug. "He just pulled her to him, and how can anyone get away from him when he looks like _that_?"

Everyone sits there, processing the information—because Ingo's not wrong. As they have all witnessed, Kylo's arms are nothing short of fiction. Some of the men give pointed glances in the direction of Hux's empty seat, who had to be rolled off to the bathroom earlier in his brand new wheelchair.

"Did you do anything?" Finn finally demands. "Stop him, talk to him, confront him?"

"How could I?" Ingo says helplessly, gesturing to himself. "Besides, she looked like she was kissing him back at one point, so I wasn't sure. I just told someone"—they're not allowed to call them "producers" while the cameras are on—"and left."

Silence.

Finally, Tritt barks out, "Show of hands. Who here has actually kissed Rey so far?"

There is an uncomfortable pause, but everyone glances around the room, surveying each other. Slowly, some of the men lift their hands into the air.

"Just here and there during the cocktail parties, small little pecks," Rumi confesses. "But…it sounds to me like Ingo means that Kylo was kissing her for a little while longer than that."

"During our one-on-one date, just at the end there," Mitaka shrugs.

Finn rubs the back of his neck. "Me, too. Cocktail parties."

The quietness descends again, thick with tension between the men. Finally, Erich says, "That's messed up, man. That wasn't even Kylo's turn. He cut into your time, Ingo."

"You don't have to tell me twice," Ingo says, miserable. "I was really looking forward to spending more time with Rey. It's so rare, you know? And then he just—went and did his Kylo thing, I guess."

The men don't speak for several more moments, still too dumbfounded by Ingo's news.

At last, the silence is broken by loud metal squeaking across marble floor as the door pushes open. When they all snap their heads up to look, they see a familiar ginger-haired man noisily rolling his way back into the parlor.

"That feels _much_ better." Hux gives them a blinding smile, and his wheelchair comes to a complete stop. "What’d I miss?"

* * *

Cut to Rumitar Shay. "Um," he says. "How do I feel about Kylo? Look, I just…I think there's a way you should go about some things, that's all."

He clears his throat. "We're all grown men here. We're adults. There's a way to do this respectfully. I know we're in an unusual setting, but…we should still be able to respect each other."

* * *

Cut to Tritt Opan. "You _don't_ want to know my opinion on Kylo Ren," he says bluntly. "Trust me."

* * *

Cut to Finn. "That's [BLEEEP]ing maniacal," he says in disbelief. "What he did? That's some straight-up, next-level, sociopathic bull[BLEEEEP]. Sneaking off, cutting into Ingo's time, making her kiss him."

He shakes his head, clearly upset. "He's already had his time with her, so the longer that we don't all have our equal amount of time with her, the more he's cutting into all of our time, and the more he's [BLEEEEP]ing over the rest of us. He's playing some kind of weird game with Rey right now, and I'm not here for it."

* * *

Cut to Mitaka. He scratches his chin, uncomfortable. "I think there's something we're all missing here." He gives a small shrug, and he almost seems like he wants to say more, but he drops his hands.

From off-screen, a soft, inaudible question filters through the mic.

Mitaka blinks. "How do I know? Well, I just don't think…I just don't think he would do that. I don't have…like, evidence. If that's what you're asking."

* * *

Cut to Hux, who practically leaps out of his seat. "See? _See?_ SEE?" He hollers excitedly, jabbing a finger at the camera.

"Oh, he's a professional actor alright. Everyone underestimates him, but you can't fool Armitage J. Hux. Hoo boy, no siree, not me." The ginger-haired man puffs out his chest, vindicated.

"I come from a family of human bloodhounds. You tell any sort of lie, and I'll be able to sniff it out." To demonstrate, he makes a loud snuffling sound. "You smell that?" Hux asks seriously, glancing at the camera. He waits for an answer, presumably from someone behind the lens.

"No? Well, that's what Kylo smells like." He nods solemnly. "That's the pungent smell of a dirty, dirty _liar_."

Someone murmurs a response, and Hux blinks.

"He hasn't—he hasn't been in this room yet? I don't—that's not really—that's not what I meant."

After a moment's pause, he clears his throat.

"The 'J' is for Jackson."

* * *

"That was _stunning_ ," Snoke raves. "Marvelous. Inspired, my dear."

Rey had been snatched aside by Snoke and the producers at the first opportunity, and now she sits with them in a makeshift video confessional room.

They had re-fashioned a separate, private room of the upscale hotel for this exact purpose, and she finds herself studying the ornate, gold-framed decorations on the wall while she faces down a marble-white fireplace.

And, of course, the cameras.

"He almost left, but you stopped him just in time," Snoke continues smoothly, "and that was a stroke of _genius_ , how you did that. Brava!" The elderly man clasps his hands together, his face beaming.

"Could you even imagine—losing our villain this early on? Well, we have other choices, but nothing quite to the magnificent level of Kylo Ren." Snoke makes a tutting sound. "What a travesty it would have been, if his journey with us had been cut short. I must say, I'm so pleased that you took our earlier conversations to heart. You were _sensational_." And he smiles radiantly at her again.

In the background, Rey notices a flurry of activity as some of the crew members shuffle back and forth behind the cameras, and a crewman ducks underneath the cameras' line of sight to discreetly stop in front of Snoke and ask him a question. Snoke tilts his head and mutters a response, gesturing sharply back and forth between the lens and himself and Rey.

"I didn't do it for that," she says.

Snoke stills.

He turns his head toward her, very slowly, away from the murmured conversation he had been having with the crewman. Rey watches his neck craning and twisting, like wringing an old dish towel, until he meets her eyes.

"Whatever do you mean, my dear?" Snoke asks, lifting his brows. His voice is pleasant, but she knows better than that. The elderly man has always struck her as a serpentine creature, graceful and poised until ready to strike.

Still, Rey isn't deterred.

"I kissed him because I wanted to," she says plainly.

There is a slight pause, and Snoke waves the crew member away with a dismissive curl of his hand. When they're both alone in front of the cameras again, he leans forward in his chair, hands tucked beneath his chin.

"Rey," he says, and his voice is a touch too patient. "Kylo is a perfect _villain_."

They stare each other down, and Rey can hear the hands on the clock ticking away on the mantelpiece.

"But just that," he adds. His eyes are very, very shiny, and he smiles as if he is telling her a wonderful joke that they are both privy to.

Rey thinks about Kylo's face when he pulled away from her at last, when he beheld her with such blinding reverence that it made her knees tremble.

"I'm not so sure about that," she says, with an apologetic note in her voice.

She knows what she's saying—what it would mean for the show, and the story that Snoke is trying to tell on TV right now. But Rey thinks that if she's going to marry someone at the end of this, she better be damn sure.

The smile on Snoke's face tightens by a fraction, but he doesn't move. "You tried to get rid of him," he reminds her. "I stopped you."

"I know." Rey gives him a thin smile. "Thank you."

There is another tense pause. She feels the tightly coiled energy of the room, and none of the crewmen behind Snoke even dare to draw breath. The host's smile falls away, replaced by a severe expression.

"Kylo isn't husband material."

She knows. Rey knows that Snoke had cast Kylo to be the antagonist of her season. The villains aren't supposed to be the happily ever after. They're not supposed to get the girl.

Rey knows this.

She feels strangely calm. She looks down at her lap, rearranging the sheer, glittering black skirts and gauzy material with utmost care.

"We'll see," she says.

* * *

Cut to Rey, sitting down for a video confessional. She folds her hands in her lap, and she presses her mouth together into a thin line. "He's…interesting, to me." She lets out a shallow breath, and she reaches up to hook a stray piece of hair behind her ear.

"There's something about him." Rey blinks. "I…I want to try and understand him a little better. I'm still not…sure, that anything about this is the right thing to do. Maybe I'm being a total tosser about this. I'm still not sure he's even really here for the right reasons." She gives a small shrug.

"But he seemed sincere. Earlier."

* * *

The door to the hotel parlor creaks open.

Everyone whips their heads around to look, and a huge, hulking body squeezes through the entrance. The room is deathly quiet as Kylo Ren slowly moves through the space and seats himself far off to the side of the main wraparound couch.

He doesn't look around the room. He doesn't make eye contact with anyone.

But the rest of the men watch him with singular attention, condemning in their stillness, and the burgeoning silence is a wide-mouthed, gaping vacuum. Maybe they had all been wrapped up in conversation before that, but the chatter had immediately faded away in his presence.

The giant of a man hunkers down in his chair, clearly able to feel the attention and uncomfortable with it. He clutches at his elbows, and his forearms are so taut that he seems ready to burst from the seams of his sleeves. Still, he doesn't look over at them.

Kylo keeps his eyes glued to his leather shoes.

The other men collectively hold their breath, no one daring to move a single muscle. The atmosphere is rife with tension, stretching over them like a thin, strained band. The camera pans across the room, zooming in on particular faces.

Finally, Rumi breaks the silence. "Kylo," he says, clearing his throat—which is unusual for him, because he has never addressed the dark-haired man before. "Where have you been? We haven't seen you around."

As usual, Kylo takes his time forming his response. His jaw stiffens, and he seems like he doesn't want to reply, or even talk at all.

But eventually, he says in a low, gravelly voice: "Bathroom."

The room exchanges cutting looks. Even if they hadn't already been informed otherwise earlier, the man’s detached tone hints that he’s withholding truth. The astonishing thing is, he doesn't seem inclined to make more of an effort to conceal it.

"Really," Hux drawls. "Long time to be in the bathroom." His wheelchair squeaks forward.

Kylo blinks at the sight of the chair.

It's possible he hadn't seen it yet, since a field producer only swapped out Hux's crutches for the chair during the middle of the night portion of the date.

Kylo studies Hux's wheelchair for a heartbeat longer, and he presses his mouth together in a thin, flat line. Finally, he tears his gaze away. "Uh-huh," he says, too quiet to inspire any confidence in his answer.

"Number two?" Hux presses. "Were you taking a dump, Kylo?"

Kylo blinks at the floor a couple more times, almost like he wasn't expecting to be grilled on that. But the red-haired man waits, expectantly. The camera zooms in on Kylo's face, and after another moment, he gives a half-hearted, noncommittal grunt.

"Iiiiinteresting," Hux says, drawing out the word. "Because I, too, was in the bathroom. For a very long time." He seems too excited to declare this to the world. "And I didn't see you."

Kylo looks up at him sharply.

"I was in the other bathroom." He jerks his thumb in a general direction. "Downstairs."

Hux seems utterly unimpressed, and he narrows his eyes at him. It's a strange staredown, with the ginger-haired man seated at a diminutive height in his lurching, wheeling apparatus, and Kylo folded over and looking comically large in his too-small chair.

* * *

Cut to Finn. He stares into the camera. “Are these two adult men seriously duking it out over going to the bathroom?”

* * *

Kylo looks away first.

But Ingo Salik had jolted abruptly when Kylo moved, and now the younger man is staring at his chest with a strange expression. Finally, he seems to manage to muster up the courage to form his question.

"Kylo," Ingo interjects, awkward, "what's that on your shirt?"

Everyone turns to Ingo, and then to Kylo. Kylo scrunches his face at Ingo in confusion, but he looks down at himself.

He seems to realize, then, that he's sparkling.

Or glittering. Perhaps glitter is a more accurate word for what's smeared all over the front of his otherwise white shirt and crisp black jacket.

It's not subtle, either.

It was easy to miss earlier, when Kylo was skulking around in the shadows, and when he sat down with his arms pulled to his chest. But when he moved around to respond to Hux, he unfolded his arms from his torso, and the hundreds of tiny specks of glitter caught the light all at once.

He looks like a giant disco ball.

The room is dumbstruck, and their eyes roam over him, following where it leads—all the way down to his crotch and legs.

"Kylo," Rumi says in a strangely quiet voice. "Wasn't Rey wearing a glittery dress tonight?"

Kylo snaps his head up to look at him, and he almost seems flustered, at a loss for words. After another moment, he clenches his teeth, and he reaches over with his huge hands and swipes vigorously at his chest. Clouds of glitter burst into the air, but it doesn't do much good for the more stubborn specks that cling to the fabric.

He gives up after a minute or so, and he settles for a tight shrug of his shoulders.

"This whole place is full of glitter." Kylo throws a vague gesture to the opulent setting and expensive furniture, as if that would explain everything. The men continue to gawk at him in stupefied silence.

He doesn't look anyone else in the eye again.

* * *

Cut to Kylo, sitting down for a video confessional. There is a small tick at his jaw. "It wasn't really any of their business." He stares straight ahead, his face dispassionate.

* * *

When Rey returns from giving her video confessional, she rejoins the men on the grey L-shaped couch. The furniture dips slightly underneath her added weight, and she turns to face them with a buoyant smile. "Hello, boys," she says cheerily.

The men return hopeful, encouraging expressions.

"Thank you all so much again, for joining me tonight. For going on this lovely date with me today. I had an absolutely fantastic time tonight, and I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else in the world. I truly enjoyed getting to know each and every one of you, and I learned so much about you all today." She clasps her hands together in her lap.

"I was truly bowled over by how much you've all learned about me over the past few weeks. I apologize that my own knowledge isn't quite up to scratch—" Rey exchanges an apologetic look with Rumi, who grins back at her. "—but I promise it's only going to get better from here on out. I'm making a commitment to you boys tonight."

Rey looks around the room, making careful eye contact with each of them. "If I'm keeping you around, it's because I like you. I truly want to get to know you better. I know this situation is so difficult, trying to get to know each other without stepping on anyone else's toes. But I'm determined to make this work, if you'll all have me."

Her dates give her heartening, supportive responses—murmurs of "Of course we'll have you, Rey", and reassurances of "We're going to make it work with you, too".

Rey flashes a relieved smile. With that being said, she reaches over to pick up the rose sitting on the table, and she gingerly twists the stem in her hands. "Tonight, one of you guys really opened up to me, and you showed me a lot of kindness and patience when I was trying to figure some things out for myself."

She pushes her chin up and makes eye contact with one of the men. "Ingo," she says, and the air goes out of the room. "Will you accept this rose?"

Ingo looks appropriately shocked, and Rey understands.

She couldn't find him earlier, after. She had tried looking for him when she'd left him, but when she couldn't locate him, she assumed he had gone back to the others. She felt properly bad about it, knew she had cut things off short with him, and that wasn't right.

Everyone needed their fair shot at time right now.

She wasn't going to fault him for her own misgivings and shortcomings, not when he'd been so massively patient and understanding, albeit a little confused, when she told him she had to go.

Rey allows her eyes to drift just a fraction beyond Ingo, to where Kylo sits.

His back is ramrod straight, with his arms folded stiffly across his chest. She can see his whitening knuckles from across the room, and he hasn’t moved from that strange, petrified position since she sat down. He meets her gaze steadily, and the silence is a yawning chasm between them.

He had barely reacted when she told him what she had to do with the rose, right after.

"I have to, you understand," she had said, hesitant. "It—it wouldn't be right to poor Ingo. Since I left him. I shouldn't—I shouldn't have done that."

Kylo didn't blink, and he didn't look at her. His fingers had twitched and curled into a small fist at his side, but she noticed.

"Not…that I regret it," she added hurriedly. "I don't. Not at all."

She stared at him helplessly, hoping he understood. Things were different, here. This was a no-man's land. She couldn't just do as she liked, as she pleased without consequence.

He gave her another stiff, jerky nod.

And then he had shouldered past her, walking off without looking back.

His silence was bleak and discouraging, and she watched him stalk off, unable to do anything else to stop him. She almost worried he hadn't understood.

That he wouldn't stay, after all.

Rey blinks timidly at him now, and he stares back at her. His expression is unreadable. She swallows a small lump in her throat, and she pulls her eyes a millimeter back to Ingo.

The other man is moving forward now—scratching the back of his head with a surprised, but pleased look. "Of course I will," Ingo Salik says, his voice soft. He peeks shyly at her, and Rey can't help the bubble of laughter that rises out of her chest.

She doesn't dare glance at the dark shadow of a man in the corner of the room, not while she pins the rose to Ingo's lapel with an inordinate amount of attention. She gives his chest a light pat when she's done.

"There," she tells Ingo brightly.

Rey allows herself to steal a glimpse at Kylo, just one last time.

This time, he's not looking at her anymore.

* * *

Cut to Ingo, with the group date rose pinned to his jacket. He rapidly blinks at the camera, not speaking right away. “Raise your hand," he says in a careful voice, "if you thought you were going to get murdered by Kylo Ren on national television.” Slowly, he lifts his hand into the air.

There is a prolonged silence on-camera, and then...

“Did you _see_ him?” Ingo bursts. “I mean, I was trying so hard not to look at him, but how could you _not_ feel him burning a giant hole in your back? That guy is intense.” He does a full-body shudder. “His eyes were on me the whole time. I think he totally thought he was going to get that rose.”

Pause. “Actually, I think we all kinda thought he was going to get it, too. Since he...you know. I mean—” he hesitates. “Why _didn’t_ he get the rose? She kissed him back too, right? Did she not like the kiss? Was he a bad kisser? Or did she maybe just...didn’t want to kiss him?”

* * *

**#TheBride hashtag on Twitter**

Rae @rachelj19  
me, a fool who watches #TheBride every Monday night  
[images of a stuffed white toy cat seated on top of a box with arms outstretched, looking confused]

miley!! @BeSmiley110  
Rey and Her Poor Life Choices: a new upcoming band ft. Kylo Ren  
#TheBride  
[GIF zooming in on Justin Timberlake's judging face]

karleigh 🌴 @karmaisabeach_  
Hux: *gets one (1) tiny singular scratch on his being*  
Hux: I nEeD a wHoLeAsS wHeELcHaiR  
#TheBride  
[image of mocking SpongeBob SquarePants]

AC @smithxbecca19  
Replying to @karmaisabeach_  
also Hux: I KNEW KYLO SUCKED  
[GIF loop of Hux from his video confessional, leaping out of his wheelchair over and over again]

bea 🦋 @niennathegrey  
I just wanted to say to Ingo:  
#TheBride  
[GIF of Kris Jenner saying, "You're doing amazing, sweetie."]

🐝 🐝 🐝 @imabeebzbz  
Good night to everyone except Kylo from #TheBride  
[screenshot of Kylo with a deadpan expression]

Dark-Mage-13 @dark_mage_13  
is anyone, and i mean ANYONE confused over Rey sleeping on this KING???  
#TheBride  
[image of Rumitar Shay's headshot from _The Bride_ ]

angelica @angelaschuyler1000  
everyone in America: we are literally begging you to send Kylo home  
#TheBride  
[GIF of Rey frowning at the camera, confused: "But he seemed sincere. Earlier."]

• 🇳🇿 • 🇫🇷 • @reyloise  
does Kylo look like a rly fantastic kisser, or is it just me??  
#TheBride  
[slo-mo GIF of Kylo kissing Rey]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Week 3 is still going strong. Sorry, guys, there's a lot to unpack here!
> 
> You might have noticed that this update is significantly shorter, and I think that might be the norm moving forward. But I already have the next chapter in the works, so that'll be out very soon! I'm going to work on faster and shorter updates (about half the length I've been doing so far, but still about 5K-6K words) since I feel confident that the world has been set up well enough now without needing 10K+ words in exposition. As a result, I've updated the chapter count to reflect my new outline.
> 
> This will allow me to wrap up drama neatly while giving each scene room to breathe, since I've been glossing over a lot of the cocktail parties and other things so far. Not anymore 😏
> 
> I really hope you guys enjoyed this update! I had a lot of fun writing it, and I'm very excited about where I'm going to take this story.
> 
> As always, a great big thank you to [Flyingflapjack](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22628110), my beta and sprinting buddy from the Reylo Writing Den! Send her some love from me, you guys. She deserves it more than anyone ❤️
> 
> Kudos and comments are everything, and I am always so inspired to hear from my readers. If you have any thoughts, opinions, whims, please let me know in the comments down below 🥰 Thank you so much for reading, and stay tuned for Chapter 5: Week 3, Part 3—which will be out _very_ soon! 👀
> 
> Follow me on [tumblr](http://laurarobin.tumblr.com) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/thelivinglaura)!


	5. Week 3, Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe confronts Kylo over the events of the group date. Rey spends time with Rose, and she gives out the 1-on-1 date. Week 3 ends with a shocking conclusion. Don't miss this week's all-new episode of _The Bride_ , 8/7c tonight on FOBC!

It's late in the morning when Poe rounds the corner and bursts into the sunroom.

Kylo is sitting by the window with a leg propped up, and he's holding a folded paperback novel in his hands, which he lowers upon the explosion of sound which heralds Poe's arrival. The older man stares at him with his brow deeply furrowed, not speaking right away. Kylo meets his eyes evenly, and they blink at each other for a few, brief moments.

Surprisingly, it's Kylo who speaks first. "Can I help you?" he asks.

Poe grinds his jaw, forcing himself to be civil. "Kylo."

"Poe," Kylo acknowledges in a low murmur. He continues to stare expectantly, waiting.

Poe eases himself into the room, choosing an inoffensive chair away from the window to sit upon. He rubs the stubble on his chin, contemplating, before he finally decides to get it over with.

"I heard you kissed Rey."

If Kylo is surprised, he doesn't show it. He barely flinches. The dark-haired man simply lays down his book on the window sill, and he folds his hands over his torso. "Where'd you hear that?"

"Does it really matter?" Poe gives a bark of dry laughter. "Did you?"

The other man studies him for a few, prolonged moments. "So what if I did?" he asks finally, and he doesn't move.

Poe eyes him sardonically, unimpressed. "And did she want to kiss you?" he challenges.

This time, it's Kylo's turn to frown, a deep middle crease denting his forehead. He says nothing for several moments, and his fingers clench next to him. But the camera notices, and it zooms in on his hands for a fleeting moment.

"What are you saying?" Kylo says at last, his voice very soft.

"Just that," Poe responds, and his own words are level. He doesn't back down. "Did she want to kiss you?"

Kylo is silent for too long, staring at Poe with an unreadable expression. "I believe," he says with a quiet rumble, "that she did."

That's all that he says. He doesn't elaborate further on the subject.

Poe stares back at him, unconvinced. "You believe that she did," he echoes flatly. "Did you check first? At all? Or ask?"

Kylo doesn't respond this time. He just looks at him, his face devoid of emotion.

When it becomes clear that the bigger man isn’t going to reply, Poe gives a low, dark chuckle, and he runs his hand over his face again. "You're really something else, you know that?"

* * *

Cut to Kylo, sitting in front of the camera. "He believed what he wanted to believe," he says simply.

* * *

Cut to Poe, whose jaw is slack with anger. He makes a sharp, cutting gesture to someone who sits just beyond view. "They're saying he just _pulled_ her to him. And he's sitting there, and he's not even denying it!"

* * *

Kylo still doesn't say anything.

Poe leans forward, folding his hands in front of his face while he rests his elbows on his knees. "Let's talk, Kylo," he says in a light voice, almost casual. "Why're you here?"

The bigger man remains unperturbed. "Why do you think I'm here?"

Poe gives another wry laugh, and the hollow sound reverberates around the room. "You know," he says conversationally, "a normal man would've said, 'For Rey'." Poe gives a pointed look. "That's the _normal_ response."

Kylo stares him down. "Is that what you want me to say?"

Poe looks at him with disbelief. "Can't you ever just give a straight answer?"

"Fine," Kylo says, leaning back against the window. "I'm here for Rey. Are you happy?"

Poe gives several, measured blinks. "Are you serious, man?"

"What?"

* * *

Cut to Poe. "That was _lit_ erally the most half-[BLEEP]ed thing I've ever heard him say."

* * *

Poe looks incensed. "You can't just copy what I told you I wanted to hear and expect me to believe that's genuine!"

Kylo gives a slow, rueful smile. "Looks like I won't change your mind no matter what." He folds his hands together in his lap.

* * *

Cut to Kylo. "He already has his own opinion of me. It's not going to change."

He's silent for a moment, and then his eyes drop briefly to his hands, before returning to the camera lens. "His isn't the one that matters, anyway."

* * *

"Alright." Poe seems to make a concentrated effort to return to his usual, easygoing manner. He leans back in his chair. "You say you're here for Rey," he says, and he shoots Kylo an ironic look, as if to tell him exactly what he thought of that. "Have you ever even talked with her?"

At this point, Kylo looks insulted. "Of course," he says, his voice tight.

"Right." Poe pastes a smile on his face. "A real conversation with her, though. Have you had one?"

"I think," the dark-haired man says crisply, "that would be between me and her." His body has gone rigid.

"Right, right. I'm just saying. None of us have ever seen you talking to her for very long, so to go from that to kissing is a little…ill-conceived, don't you think?" Poe says, his voice careful.

"What?"

Poe blinks at him, undeterred.

* * *

Cut to Poe. "He can't just go around, making girls who he's barely said two words to _kiss_ him just because he's strong enough to do it." He shakes his head. "The thing is, no one in the house is even sure Rey wanted to kiss him, and that's the [BLEEEP]ing problem, isn't it?"

* * *

"What do you like about Rey?" Poe says, lifting his brows. His question hangs in the air, an open challenge—and across from him, he watches as Kylo's face becomes hard and flinty.

He doesn't immediately reply, so the older man pushes on.

"Why did you even kiss her, if you've barely talked to her? What are you trying to accomplish here, Kylo Ren?"

* * *

Cut to Kylo, sitting in the video confessional room. His throat bobs, and there is a slight tremor in his body. "I…I wanted to ask her."

* * *

Kylo pulls himself upright, his shoulders vibrating with tension. "I think," he says, "these aren't questions you should be asking _me_."

He stares Poe down, clearly no longer in good humor.

Poe frowns, confused. Eventually, he lifts his hands in the air, a universal sign of peace. "Okay, buddy. I was just putting the big questions out there." He proffers an easy shrug.

"Are you going to ask me next if I'm here for the right reasons?" Kylo huffs.

Everyone is familiar with the show's unofficial catchphrase, the question that comes out of every contestant's mouth at least once a season.

"Well." Poe looks him square in the eye. "Are you?"

Silence. A short, broken laugh rises out of Kylo's chest, and then he pulls himself to his feet, standing at his full, towering height. The camera does a quick sweep of his profile, emphasizing the lines of his intimidating figure.

Poe stands too, albeit a little unsteadily in his hasty movement to match Kylo Ren. He eyes the bigger man warily, but Kylo just gives him a small, watery smile.

He doesn't even brush past him as he exits the sunroom.

* * *

Cut to Poe, sitting down for a video confessional. He is hunched over something in his hands, his eyes scanning back and forth rapidly.

After a moment, he cuts his eyes to the camera, his lips pressed together. Slowly, Poe lifts his hands in view of the lens, displaying the book that he holds. He taps the brightly illustrated cover a couple of times—the paperback novel that Kylo had left behind, forgotten.

" _Lord of the Flies_ ," he says incredulously.

* * *

"Hello, Kylo," Dopheld Mitaka calls out to the hulking figure.

The greeting falls effortlessly from his lips, and he doesn't tear his eyes away from the sizzling pan in front of him as he hovers over the kitchen stove, tossing around the contents of the pan with concentrated effort.

Kylo, on the other hand, looks like a deer in headlights.

The dark-haired man was stepping inside the kitchen from the patio, sliding the glass door shut behind him when Mitaka addressed him by name. This was apparently unusual enough for him that he now seems wholly unsure how to respond.

Mitaka looks up when he registers the silence, feeling the weight of the other man's stare on him.

Kylo has just returned from his late afternoon run, which Mitaka is familiar with by now since the man seems to run like clockwork, moreso than anything he's ever witnessed. Kylo is _definitely_ a creature of habit. Right now, he has a big white towel slung around his neck, and he wears a pair of black athletic shorts and nothing else. Gingerly, Kylo lifts a corner of his towel to mop the sweat at his brow, and he scrunches up his face at Mitaka.

"Did you—did you say my name?" he says, apprehensively.

Mitaka blinks. "Yeah, I did."

They stare at each other like that, and Kylo fidgets with the end of his towel, looking very uncomfortable.

Behind him, Mitaka's pan sputters angrily.

"Oh, _[BLEEEP]_ _!_ " The square-jawed man whirls around back to the stove, and he grabs the handle of the pan with haste. He tries to shake the food around again, but somehow, flames erupt from the stove range, and he gives another panicked yelp.

Quickly, giving the fire as wide of a berth as possible, he leans over to switch the stove off.

Mitaka grabs a plate, muttering to himself, and dumps the contents of the pan with a great big splat. The food shudders a little in its gelatinous form, before collapsing entirely on the platter in a shapeless heap.

It's a little blackened and burned from the last few seconds of heat, but overall, Mitaka is pleased. He thinks it turned out pretty well this time.

"What," and Kylo's voice is suddenly cutting through Mitaka's thoughts, "is _that?_ "

Mitaka breaks out into a huge grin. "It's fried rice," he proclaims, straightening his back. "Ideally, I would've used a scoop to plate it and make the shape a little more appetizing, but as you just saw…"

Kylo is even more silent than usual, so Mitaka turns to peek at him.

"What?" he asks hesitantly.

The other man doesn't say anything right away. At last, he works his mouth a little, and asks, "What's that all around it?" He makes a vague gesture to the plate.

Mitaka looks down at the dish, squinting at what he's referring to. "Oh," he says. "That's egg. Like, an omelet. Kind of like an egg pancake? I folded it, kind of, to make a bed for the rice so that it would look more interesting."

"Egg," Kylo repeats, flatly.

"Yeah!" Mitaka confirms with a cheerful smile. For a final touch, he grabs the condiment that is handy next to him on the island counter, and he squirts a generous heaping all over the food.

When he looks up again, he realizes that Kylo has stumbled back a couple of steps.

"Are you okay, Kylo?" Mitaka asks, concerned.

Kylo's not looking at him. His eyes are glued to Mitaka's dinner. "Was that hot sauce?"

Mitaka twists the green cap of the bottle again to close it, and he nods to Kylo. "Good old Sriracha," he says, giving the bottle a fond pat. "You can never go wrong with it."

More silence.

Kylo stares, blinking several times. Finally, he wrenches his gaze away, and he meets Mitaka's eyes with careful politeness. "I see," he says.

Mitaka gives him a broad smile, and then he pulls open a drawer to rummage around for a fork.

"Well, I'm going to—go upstairs, and—take a shower," Kylo says haltingly. He motions to his sweaty silhouette.

"Of course." Mitaka nods, understanding, and his hand waves in a dismissive gesture. And then, casually: "We're all going to play Cards Against Humanity later. Did you want to join us?"

Kylo freezes where he stands, and he slowly turns to look at Mitaka again. Mitaka waits for his response, expectant, and the bigger man's expression morphs into bewilderment. Kylo stares at him as if he's grown three heads, and in his confusion, he wipes at his brow some more. "You're asking me? To play?" he asks, stiffly.

Mitaka produces a fork, and he waves it around the air. "Yeah," he says. "You should play with us." He smiles affably at Kylo.

"I…I don't think that's a good idea."

The square-jawed man studies him with close appraisal, and there is a look in his eyes that is a little too discerning. Finally, he nods. "Alright," he says simply. "If you change your mind, we'll be in the living room."

Kylo blinks at him. A moment passes, and he returns a brusque nod before turning on his heel, already striding away. Mitaka returns his attention to his food, and he is carefully cutting into it and sliding a huge bite-sized chunk onto his fork when the bigger man whirls around again, his face twisted strangely.

"You—you don't care that I—kissed her?" Kylo asks, his voice quiet.

Mitaka sets down his fork with a gentle clink. "What?"

"Rey. I kissed her."

Mitaka stares at him, not understanding. "We're all dating her, aren't we?"

Kylo mashes his lips together. A few heartbeats pass. "I—I pulled her to me. Right? Something like that."

The psychotherapist wrinkles his brow, baffled, and he rests his elbows on the counter. He doesn't speak for several moments. "Isn't that usually how kisses happen?" Mitaka asks, at last.

Kylo blinks.

The two men stare at each other, equally confounded.

"I mean, yeah—"

"You pull the other person to you, right?—to kiss them—how else would you—"

"Maybe I should've asked first?"

Mitaka is quiet for too long. "I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard of people asking first before they kiss them," he says slowly.

Silence.

Kylo swallows the lump in his throat. "Right."

Mitaka considers him carefully. After a moment, he picks his fork back up again. "You don't have to join us tonight if you don't want to," he tells Kylo. "Maybe next time?"

The other man tilts his head uncertainly.

"Maybe," Kylo murmurs. With that, he picks up his feet again, making his way toward the exit.

His back seems a little forlorn, and maybe just a little sad.

Mitaka watches him go, his eyes flickering to his plate. "Before you go, Kylo—would you like to try some of my fried rice?" he offers suddenly.

The bigger man jumps. He turns around again, looking wide-eyed. "Um," he says. "No thank you."

"Are you sure?" Mitaka smiles sunnily at him. "It's super delicious, and I think you'd really enjoy it!"

"I—" Kylo falters. "It looks—"

"It's a little burnt around the edges because of earlier, but you can just avoid those parts," Mitaka rushes to amend. "It really is quite tasty otherwise."

"I—…" Kylo casts his eyes around the room rapidly.

"My fried rice is _killer_ ," Mitaka promises.

A heavy pause fills the room.

"Have you—have you tried it yet?"

"Not yet!" Mitaka says brightly, bolstered by his apparent interest. "But I've made this before, and I can promise you that this is probably my best attempt yet."

There's a jump in the hollow underneath Kylo's eye, and his forearms bunch up and tighten unnaturally. Mitaka isn't sure what it all means, but after a few seconds tick by, he _is_ rather pleased when the lumbering giant actually makes his way over to the kitchen island and sticks his hand out for the fork.

The psychotherapist gives it to him with a delighted smile, and he opens the drawer again for a new fork for himself. He watches Kylo pick up the piece he had cut into earlier and bring it to his mouth.

He chews slowly, carefully, before swallowing with a perfectly blank expression.

"How is it?" Mitaka asks, a little excited despite himself. It's rare when he can find the opportunities to share his cooking with others.

"Very good," Kylo says, his voice a little wooden, but Mitaka is used to his demeanor by now and doesn't mind it at all. Coming from him, in fact, it's probably high praise.

"I _told_ you," Mitaka says, beaming. Kylo gives him a stiff nod, and he sets his fork down in the sink. Without another word, he flies out of the kitchen.

Mitaka isn't sure why he seemed like a man on a mission, but if he had to guess, his sweat must've really started to bother him. He probably really needed the shower. Mitaka sticks his own fork into his food now, and he carves out a piece to bring to his lips.

A few seconds later, he finds himself retching into the nearby trash can.

"God, Rey, do you do this all day?"

Rey turns her head to the side of her reclining beach chair, sliding her tinted cat-eye sunglasses down the bridge of her nose so she can look at Rose. They're lying side by side on twin chaise lounges at the edge of the pool, sprawled out under the delicious heat of the California summer sun so that they, too, can acquire the sun-kissed glow that California girls are so prone to having.

"Not every day," she admits, stretching her toes so that they curl inwards. "It's a little different with you around." Rey peers at her friend with a cheeky grin. "I'm having way more fun right now than I normally would by myself."

"I don't believe you," Rose complains, and she tilts her head to better face the sun. "This is amazing. Absolutely divine. Ten out of ten. Would do this every day, friend or no friend."

Rey shrugs. "It gets a little boring after a while," she confides. "Plus, I always forget to reapply sunscreen, so I'm scared of coming back in looking like a lobster for the cameras."

"Aww. But you would make the cutest little lobster," Rose coos.

Rey pulls herself up from the chair, and she whips around to squint at the other girl. "Excuse you," she says, but without any real heat to her words. "Lobsters are _not_ cute."

"They would be if you were one," Rose grins. "You're always cute no matter what."

Rey narrows her eyes. "I'm going to remember this," she warns her. "Next time you don't want to look rubbish, I'm going to say you should go out there looking like a oppossum anyway because oppossums are cute."

"Oh, but that won't be the same," Rose pouts. "I'm not as cute as you always are."

"What? Shut up," Rey says, leaning over and giving her a blunt smack across her chest.

" _Ow!_ " Rose yelps, leaping up. "Rey, those were my boobs!"

"Exactly," Rey snipes. "I'm going to pinch your arse next if you don't quit your mumbling. You are _plenty_ cute, and I always think you're cuter than me at any given moment in time, so I better not hear you saying otherwise."

"Come on, Rey," Rose grumbles, readjusting her bikini top. "You're the _Bride_. Do you see _me_ being the Bride? I think not."

"Yeah, only because you never applied to be on _The Groom_ , despite me telling you to do it with me a hundred billion times after _you_ convinced me to do it."

"I don't know," Rose says vaguely, staring down at her legs. "I just didn't feel like doing it, you know?"

But her voice has a strange quality to it, one that is naggingly familiar. Rey studies her friend with quiet appraisal, understanding slowly threading through her, and she eventually pushes her sunglasses back over her face as she settles into her chair again.

The truth is, Rose always goes through life with so much bravado and confidence that Rey is embarrassed to say that it sometimes even works on her. She sees through it plainly right now, but she knows that there are some subjects that Rose would never choose to talk about outright. 

Especially not with the cameras rolling, a silent spectator in their everyday lives.

Because Rose has always been self-conscious about many things in her life—first and foremost being her appearance.

The first time Rey had seen her at her new elementary school, she had been utterly charmed by the bright, bubblegum-popping girl who shared her desk space.

Rey had hoped back then that they would be friends, and she was beyond elated when Rose had turned to her during their first lunch break and offered her some of the _bánh tiêu_ that her mother had packed in her bag—a hollow, fried doughnut covered in sesame seeds.

She had thought back then that Rose was simultaneously the most beautiful and nicest girl she'd ever met. Rey is happy to say that she wasn't wrong on either count.

Unfortunately, as they got older, burgeoning into middle school and beyond, some of their other peers didn't seem to think so, and they often let Rose know exactly what they thought of her.

It was a wonder Rey didn’t become a murderer by the end of their teenage years, and it was perhaps only by the saving grace of Rose telling her over and over again that she could _not_ survive high school if her best friend was behind bars that prevented that outcome.

As it turned out, Rey could be a little bit of a savage sometimes.

When she becomes angry, truly angry at someone, she has often been told that she's practically a rabid animal, lunging first and asking questions later. But that was the way she had grown up, wild and spitting mad, never truly feeling wanted by anyone at all—not even her adoptive parents, who always loved her the best they could—because those were people who _had_ to love her, were practically required to do so by law.

Never feeling wanted, until she met Rose.

So yes, Rey is deeply protective of Rose. She knows the same could be said the other way around—because Rey also got her fair share of bullies, her pathetic lack of parents broadcasted to the world at one point in her high school existence. She would never understand why teens felt the need to latch onto the failings and shortcomings of other people, and make them feel even worse about it than they already did.

It's one of the things she hates the most in life—people who are perfect and powerful, who hurt the people and things around them just because they _can_.

Rey has always been an underdog, and she has always rooted for the underdog in every single thing she's ever read or watched or experienced. Which, thinking about it, is also probably why she went into environmental law later on in her life. No one gets kicked and pushed around more than the literal planet that they currently all inhabit.

But Rey never had it quite as bad as Rose.

And even when Rey did have it bad, she didn't suffer it quietly. Rose has always been unfailingly kind, too gentle in nature.

When it came to Rey, Rose would easily return fire with dozens of vulgar insults ready on the tip of her tongue. But when it came to herself, she was surprisingly mum on the subject.

That was unacceptable, so Rey had taken it upon herself early on in their pubescent years to fight back for her.

She didn't always succeed.

Rey couldn't do anything about the crumpled-up notes, the ones that they pushed into her friend’s locker and Rose had chosen to hide them from her, because she had known exactly how Rey would react and she was sick of Rey getting herself into trouble.

Those were probably the worst of the worst, and Rey never got to see a single word of it. Rose had made sure of that.

So yes, Rose is insecure about her appearance.

Rey had never really understood, never thought of Rose as anything less than stunning because it didn’t _matter_ what a bunch of single cell brain twats had said, and she had not truly considered it as a scruple that Rose had had when she told Rey she wouldn't join her in applying for _The Groom_.

Because of course, it makes sense. _The Groom_ is practically a beauty pageant at its core.

Only gorgeous, dramatic girls got picked to be on the show, and until this very moment, Rey hadn't recognized Rose's qualm about those stipulations.

She feels a little silly for not realizing it sooner.

It had never occurred to Rey how Rose might feel, when they watched _The Groom_ and _The Bride_ together every Monday and Tuesday night.

"You're [BLEEEP]ing gorgeous," Rey says, out of the blue. "You know that, right?"

Rose gives her a look, and then she nudges Rey's shoulder with her own. "Of course I am," she agrees readily. "But you know you have to say that, right? You're my best friend."

Rey looks at her over the tops of her sunglasses again, perfectly serious. "I don't care. I thought it when we were little, and I still think it. You're the most [BLEEEP]ing magnificent creature I've ever beheld, Rose Tico."

Rose rolls her eyes, snorting, but she can't help the giggle that follows on the heels of the snort. "You're ridiculous," she tells her friend.

"I speak just facts," Rey says, her lips curling into a smile, and she turns her attention back to the sky overhead. "Hashtag just facts."

At that, Rose slides her a sly glance. "Are we going to talk about hashtag power couple yet?"

The atmosphere immediately shifts between them, moving toward something a little more comfortable, a little more familiar. After all, there is nothing the pair enjoys more than gossiping together like two old ladies in the back pews of a Baptist church.

Rey gives a loud groan, and she curls up like a shrimp on her side. "Do we have to?" she whines, her face already flooding with heat.

"You don't have to," Rose says easily. "But just, if you would like to. I'd be down to hear more about it."

Rey pauses. Slowly, she shuffles herself around so that she's still tucked in the same position, but facing Rose. "What did you think of him?" she whispers conspiratorially, as if she doesn't have a thousand dollar mic strapped to her waist.

"He—" Rose hesitates. "He wasn't what I was expecting. I'll give him that."

Rey waits for more, impatient. " _And?_ "

"He seemed to know a lot about you, Rey." Rose gives her a strange look. "How did he even know all that?"

Rey is quiet for several long moments. "I don't know, either," she confesses finally. "It's weird, right?"

"More than just weird, Rey." Rose folds her arms across her chest. "Is it even possible for all of that to be a coincidence?"

Rey pulls herself up to rest on her elbows, staring straight ahead. She had been thinking about this a lot on her own time, and Rose only echoes her doubts and confusion. "Probably not," she says, reluctant. "Maybe one, or a few of those answers, but—how would he even guess that I liked PBJs?" Rey tilts her head to face her friend. "That's such a specific thing. People—people don't _usually_ turn to PBJs for comfort food, right?"

"No," Rose agrees, and when their eyes meet, Rey knows they’re both thinking back to simpler times—during Rey's rebellious phase, when she wasn't sure whether she loved or resented her adoptive parents, and she would often skip meals in lieu of crudely made sandwiches she had thrown together herself.

At nine or ten years old, a gourmet chef she was not, so Rey had only ever succeeded at making one thing taste good. Peanut butter and jelly.

"Did you—" The Asian girl hesitates, twirling a piece of hair around her finger. "Did you ever make PBJs on the show? In front of the cameras? When you were dating Ca—when you were on _The Groom_?"

Rey frowns, thinking deeply. "I mean—I don't know. But, like— _probably_? I eat PBJs all the time. You know that, Rose. We were on that show for like, nine weeks." She gives a helpless shrug. "What are the chances I went without eating a sandwich that whole time?"

"Okay, so probably—maybe he saw you eating them? On the show?" Rose tries, uncertain.

Rey opens her mouth to protest—it's on the tip of her tongue to tell Rose that she _highly_ doubts Kylo ever even watched enough of her time on _The Groom_ to even notice a minute detail like that—but then she stops short, suddenly remembering how she got here in the first place.

_You're not alone._

That's what he had said, hadn't he?

Kylo had definitely watched her season of _The Groom_. Maybe even in its entirety. But Rey's brow creases again as she thinks about it some more. "Do _you_ remember seeing me make a PBJ on the show?" she asks Rose.

The line between her actual experience on _The Groom_ and what she remembers watching on her TV screen is hazy and blurred, but something Rey is rather sure of is that the producers don't usually consider the contestants making food or eating food particularly interesting. The network goes out of its way to make sure they're never actually eating during any of the camera footage for dates, so it only makes sense that that would extend to the footage from the house, too.

Would they have really showed a clip of Rey making a PBJ on the show? In what context would that have been interesting enough to air? Rey rarely got into rows with the other girls in the house, and especially not while she was making her food.

She's perplexed, to say the least.

"Umm…maybe? I'm sorry. I can't really remember," Rose says, apologetic. "I see you making PBJs all the time. It all feels the same to me."

Rey chews on her lower lip, feeling bothered. "And what about him knowing my favorite color? That was weird, right?"

"Sort of." Rose shoots her a wary glance. "To be fair, there are only _so_ many colors out there. He probably had a one in ten chance of getting it right, or something."

"But…people don't usually guess black," Rey says slowly. "Right?"

"No," her friend agrees. "Not…not right now, anyway. You kind of look…really preppy. And girly. You look like your favorite color would be a pastel, if we're going by stereotypes."

Silence.

Rey is submerged in her own thoughts, and Rose must sense that she's beginning to spiral a little, because she suddenly says, out of the blue: "But weren't you wearing a black dress that first night? When you got out of the limo?"

Rey lifts her eyes to Rose. "Oh…I guess I was, wasn't I." She thinks back on it, recalling the sleek dress that she wore the first night she stepped out of that limousine, black vinyl with a halter neckline that hugged her body, draping attractively over her hips.

Sure, it'd been a little different.

Vinyl isn't a common material for formalwear, but she couldn't resist when she found it in the niche boutique shop on the other side of town. It was shiny, and caught the light whenever she turned, and in certain lighting, she looked a bit like she was wearing an extra large trash bag.

Rey had loved it on sight.

"But a lot of girls were wearing black that night," she murmurs, almost to herself. "Little black dress, right? It's universally flattering."

Black is always a popular choice for evening attire. It doesn't mean anything, and it certainly doesn't mean that anyone who had chosen to wear the color that night particularly liked black any more than that.

"Still," Rose says. "Maybe that's how he made the association?"

Rey remains unconvinced. "Practically all of the men wore a black tux during their limo arrivals," she says. "Do _I_ think that all of them like black as a favorite color? It's just what looks good on them."

"That's different," the Asian girl insists. "Men don't get a lot of creative varieties beyond the penguin look. They get some shades of grey every now and then, maybe khaki if someone's feeling particularly daring, and maybe one pop of color every now and then from a fashion-forward soul."

Silence.

"What about my favorite book?" Rey says suddenly.

"What?"

Rey turns to her, searching her friend's eyes. "My favorite book," she repeats. "He got that right, too."

The other girl purses her mouth. "Rey," she says. "Your favorite books are _Harry Potter_."

"So?"

"So, those are the favorite books of half the world's population. It was probably an easy enough guess," Rose tells her.

"Why not _Pride and Prejudice_? Why not _Jane Eyre_? Why not literally anything written by one of the Brontë sisters?" Rey says skeptically. "I think those are more obvious guesses, right?"

Rose is quiet after that, and Rey knows she's made her point.

At their age, women tend to fawn over the great romantic classics. It's not even like Rey doesn't swoon over _Wuthering Heights_ —because she does—but she just happens to like Harry Potter more.

Except there's no way Kylo could've known that.

"Rey," Rose says suddenly. "Do you remember when you applied to be on _The Groom_?"

Rey snorts. "How could I forget?" She'd been well and truly sloshed at the time, one too many glasses of rosé impairing her judgment when her mouse hovered over the "SUBMIT" button.

"When they got back to you, didn't they have you fill out a huge questionnaire? Right before they had you come in to see that therapist?"

Rey feels her muscles locking up, even as she cranes her neck to look at her friend. "What are you saying?" she says finally.

"What kinds of questions were on there?"

Rey doesn't answer right away, but a numb, tingling sensation washes over her. She remembers exactly what kinds of questions were on there. It had over five hundred questions, after all. It was hard to forget a survey that extensive and detailed.

"But they were never made public," Rey says slowly.

Rose furrows her brow, looking concerned. She says nothing.

"When they released the cast bios on the website, _we_ came up with those. I never mentioned…anything like that. My likes, or dislikes. Not specifically."

Her friend sits up on her chair, turning to face her completely. "Rey," she begins, hesitant. "Have you…have you talked to Snoke?"

Rey glances at Rose, startled.

"About Kylo?" The other girl prompts.

The silence gapes between them, heavy and oppressive. Bit by bit, Rey recalls the bizarre conversation she had with the host, and the way he had reacted when she'd expressed interest in Kylo beyond keeping him on for dramatic affairs.

With a sickening twist in her gut, Rey tears her gaze away.

The implication would be less damning if Rose would just say the words out loud, but she's not saying anything, not with the cameras around, and Rey doesn't know what to think.

She feels strange, like another person in her own body, her blood buzzing in her ears as if she were covered in pins and needles.

"I kissed him," she blurts out.

Rose jolts from her chair, whipping her head around. "What?" she says, astonished.

"We kissed," Rey repeats, quavering with embarrassment.

" _Shut up_ ," Rose breathes, her mouth in a little "o", and she reaches up to cover it with her hand. "Wha—I—how—" But she doesn't seem to know what to ask, and after some flailing, she finally manages to say, "How was it?"

"It was…" Rey hesitates, and she's not entirely sure why she feels so flustered talking about this.

Maybe it has something to do with the cameras that she knows are still trained on them, super-zoomed in on their conversation. Maybe it has to do with how she's noticed how quiet the footfalls around them have become, like the crew is trying to make Rey forget they're there.

Or maybe it's something to do with the man himself, overly big, tall, and imposing, so full of heat and life when he pulled her to him that she can't help feeling tiny and feminine whenever she thinks of him, like a shy schoolgirl.

Rose eyes her strangely. "That good, huh?"

Rey blinks, and she realizes that she's been silent for too long. She feels the color blooming across her cheeks, her palms flying up to her face. "I—no, I—" But she falters again, and the words won't come out.

Silence.

"You really like him, don't you," Rose says, and it's not a question.

Rey swivels her head around slightly, just enough so she can peek at Rose from the corner of her eye. The other girl seems deeply contemplative, but there's a twist to her mouth that Rey recognizes.

Doubt.

"I—I thought I did," Rey says in a small voice.

She's not even sure why she does.

Kylo hasn't spoken to her particularly much. He seems broody, quiet, and a little standoffish, and if she had gone off on first impressions alone, he would've never made it past a first date.

But lately, whenever he speaks to her, she feels like he's talking to something she thought she had buried long ago inside of her—some chaotic, feral, untamed creature waiting to be _seen_ again.

 _You're not alone_.

Who had he been talking to, when he had said that?

The cameras, or her?

Rey slides her sunglasses over her face, sinking down into her chair as she lets the scorching heat of the sun seep into her skin.

"I don't know," she tells Rose.

The next date card arrives at the mansion, and Rey gives the one-on-one date to Poe Dameron.

She had been meaning to get to know her frontrunner better, and choosing him had the full support of the producers and Snoke himself.

When she sat down with them earlier, they had told her in no unclear terms that she needed to pick one of the "husbands" from the men, a denotation they had given to the suitors they had clearly cast as qualified husband material. Rey had readily agreed, because it was easier to go along with what they wanted.

For now, anyway.

Poe meets her on a runway with a small, private plane parked behind her, and when he disembarks from his vehicle and sees her, he breaks out into a dazzling, winsome smile.

"You know the way to a man's heart, _cariño_ ," Poe calls out, striding toward her.

"I thought you'd like this," Rey laughs, and when he reaches her, she leans forward to press a soft kiss to his cheek. She gestures to the aircraft like she's a game show model, revealing what the contestant has won. "Today, you're going to show me how to fly this bird with you." Rey grins at him. "And then we'll take to the skies for our next destination."

Rey actually already knows a thing or two on how to fly a plane, because private plane dates had kind of been Cassian's _thing_ back when he had been the Groom. The prospect of dating a pilot appealed to the wanderlust in so many girls' hearts, and the producers were only too happy to capitalize on it.

It hadn't really been Rey's decision to make a return to that, but it seemed appropriate considering Poe's profession. And if she married him, it wasn't like she could avoid flying planes for the rest of her life.

Rey takes his hand, leading Poe onboard.

They meet with the additional pilot and crew members already on-board, chatting amiably, and after the initial take-off, Poe turns to Rey and gives her another quick breakdown on the switches and controls so that she is able to take over in his seat.

It's still just as thrilling and terrifying as last time, feeling like she's in charge of a huge metal bird that's carrying them in the sky, but Poe eases her into it with practiced grace. After a few minutes, she already feels a little more comfortable with what she's doing, and it's all thanks to the older man.

Rey finds Poe's company to be soothing and pleasant.

They have a great time bantering back and forth, and she learns that Poe is very, very funny. He also has a cocky streak, Rey thinks, one that she's not even sure he's aware of—but it's usually over things he can back up with no trouble.

After the plane touches down in a beautiful landing, Rey leads him to her next surprise: a vibrant, neon expanse of an amusement park that had been closed down, just for them. Poe breaks out into a delighted cackle, and he offers his hand to her again. She takes it without hesitation, and they race to the entrance of the park like a pair of schoolchildren.

At night, he holds her hand over dinner, gazing deeply in her eyes as he tells her a bit about his life, and Rey smiles at him the whole time.

She wonders if she would be happy with him, if she married him.

Her lips falter, just a little, and Poe doesn't seem to notice, but she gives his hand a tight squeeze. He seems slightly surprised, and he returns the gesture, grinning at her.

"How's life at the house?" she asks him, because she wants to think about something else.

"Oh," Poe says, and his voice becomes flat. "It's fine."

Rey looks at him, surprised. "What is it?" she asks.

"It's—well, you know how it is." Poe gives a nonchalant shrug. "Some of the contestants are hard to get along with, and some of them aren't even here for the right reasons. It's causing a lot of friction in the house."

Rey's hand slides away. "What are you talking about?" she says, and she can hear her own heartbeat drumming in her ears. "Who isn't here for the right reasons?" Her voice feels unnaturally loud.

"Oh, well, don't worry about it," Poe mumbles, glancing away. "There's just the one, and you'll see it soon enough."

"Poe." Rey blinks. "Who are you talking about?"

Silence.

"I want a name," she says stiffly.

Poe lets out a slow, long-suffering sigh, and he scratches the back of his head. "I don't know. I don't want to…it's just that, he's really quite difficult. He doesn't seem like he even wants to be here at all," he says, stalling. "At one point, he told all of us that he didn't even care if he impressed you or not."

Rey's head is spinning.

"We've all tried so many times to get along with him, but he's always like, 'I'm not here to make friends'." Here, Poe does an imitation of an exaggerated, masculine voice, and it leaves practically no room for doubt who he's talking about. "He's always so aggressive toward other people. And the other day, I straight up asked him if he was here for you. He wouldn't give me a real answer, and just kept being dodgy as [BLEEEP]."

Poe gives a helpless shrug. "So I figure, why would he need to do that, if he's really here for the right reasons? Why not just come out with it? It's like he doesn't want to go on camera with anything definitive, and you have to wonder why that is."

Rey has been silent throughout, and she stares at her knuckles laid across the table, slowly whitening more and more without ever hearing Poe utter a name.

"He's probably—used to cameras, is what it is. He knows his words can be taken out of context at any time, so his solution is not to say anything that could make him look bad later during his career."

" _Who_ ," Rey says through gritted teeth, and the word is so low and guttural that it makes even Poe jolt.

The seconds tick by, merciless.

Finally, Poe lets out a soft breath. "Kylo," he says, and his voice is very quiet.

Rey nods. She is a carefully arranged Barbie doll, fake and perfect and plastic, when she pulls the corners of her lips up into a smile.

"Thank you."

At the cocktail party preceding the rose ceremony, Rey pulls Kylo aside the first chance she gets.

She has barely finished addressing the men, toasting to their continued presence, when she turns her head to the bearlike figure lurking in the shadows of the room, and asks him in the fading applause if she could steal him away for a few moments.

The clapping dies away swiftly.

Rey can hear the sharp intake of breaths, the soft clink of ice against glass in the background. She doesn't move, though. She keeps her eyes fixed on Kylo Ren.

"Yes," he murmurs, blinking.

Rey waits for him with a tight smile, and when he lumbers over to her, awkward as ever, she places her hand in the crook of his arm. It was a natural instinct, but she feels him jump slightly, and Rey flickers her gaze to him with mild alarm, belatedly remembering how he felt about being touched.

Her hand stirs, and she makes a move to pull away from him, but before she can lift her palm, his own tremendous hand comes crashing down on top of hers.

He curls his fingers around her hand tightly.

Rey glances at him, surprised, but he's not looking at her. He keeps his eyes straight ahead, and then he's moving them forward, so she has no choice but to follow.

As they move along in the hallway, she points out a cozy nook outside in the back, with wicker patio chairs and plenty of colorful cushions, surrounded by tropical-looking flora and a canopy stretching overhead.

He doesn't really speak to her, just tugs his head in agreement as he leads them over to the gazebo. When they get there, she lowers herself onto the sofa, and he comes down with her in a graceless movement.

Rey retracts her hand. He finally looks at her, then.

"Kylo," Rey says, her voice crisp.

"Rey." He is barely above a whisper.

Rey swivels herself around so she is facing him completely, and she takes a deep breath. "Are you here for me, or aren't you?" she demands.

"What?" He jolts, as if he hadn't expected that.

"Are you here for me," she repeats, with patience she doesn't feel, "or aren't you?"

Kylo stares at her, the rigid set of his mouth familiar to her at this point. This is something akin to _hurt_ for him. "Yes, Rey." There is some silence. "I'm here for you."

"Really?" She presses her lips together. "This isn't because of the cameras?"

The dark-haired man jerks his head to the lens around them, and his brow creases slightly. "Why would it be because of the cameras?" he says, his voice quiet.

"For your… _career_ ," she spits out. "Exposure. Fame. A one-way ticket to stardom."

Kylo gapes at her.

"Or," Rey says, lowering her voice, "is this your audition to be the next Groom?"

He stares and stares at her, and the silence between them becomes unbearable. Rey cocks her head, taking the time to study him, trying to wean something, _anything_ from his reaction. But his face is stiff, his expression not revealing a single flare of emotion. It's like he's become a mask, and she's not sure what it all means.

"Rey." Her name sounds like a whisper. "Is that what you think?"

She doesn't reply, just folds her hands primly in her lap. Because she's waiting for a straight answer, like Poe had said, and that hadn't been one at all.

Kylo drops his gaze to his hands. "If all I wanted was fame, I think I have easier ways."

His words are cryptic, heavy with some deeper implication about his resources that she's not even sure he's aware of, but he doesn't elaborate.

"If that was 'all you wanted'?" Rey echoes, frowning. If his presence here was Snoke's doing, he would be after money. Probably a lot of it. "So you want something else, then. You want more."

Kylo won't look her in the eye. "Yes, Rey. I want more."

"What's 'more' for you?"

Silence.

Kylo continues to stare at his feet, and she almost thinks she's not going to get an answer out of him this time, so she jumps a little when he finally speaks. "You're more, Rey." The words are a hoarse croak, as if it had taken everything in him to muster up the fortitude to say them.

Rey blinks, and she is unable to keep the heat from spreading to her cheeks.

Oh. Of course, that had been a possible answer. Rey realizes that she had been so focused on prying an incriminating answer out of him that what he had actually ended up saying completely took her by surprise.

She tries to tell herself to be calm, to be normal, and that if she thinks about it, it's a generic enough response by anyone trying to convince someone else that they like them.

But there is something heartstoppingly _honest_ about the way he said it.

Rey fidgets with her dress in her lap, bunching up the material around her fist. "Oh."

"Rey." Kylo is looking at her with a strangely timid expression. "Where is this coming from? I thought—I just—you asked me to—"

Her mind is spinning again.

"I'm sorry," Rey rushes to get out. "There are just—I have so many questions, you know—we never sat down and talked about any of it. Like, you broke the glass that first night—"

Kylo blinks. "I tried to set it down—that was an accident—"

"—and Poe said you said you didn't care about me—"

"Poe?" Kylo reels back. "Poe said I said that?"

"Oh, well…um, maybe he had said something like…you said you didn't care if you _impressed_ me," Rey says, racking her brain.

"I…I don't."

Rey cuts her gaze to him, startled.

"I—I couldn't impress you even if I wanted to," he rasps, swallowing. "I mean…I—look at me. I'm not very…impressive."

And he gestures awkwardly to himself—all six feet plus of him, rippling with muscles in every movement.

Rey stares at him.

"Kylo," she says, but then she stops. Rey scoots closer to him, and she reaches out to place her hand on his knee. He jerkily tracks the movement with huge, wide eyes. "You're…you know you're actually _very_ impressive. You do know that, right?"

His gaze is still fixed on her hand on his knee, too tiny on his comically large knee.

"Uh-huh," he murmurs.

"Kylo?"

He covers her hand with his own, very softly, very carefully, like her hand is a precious bird that he is trying not to scare away. "Okay."

Rey feels stupidly lost, watching him. "I—"

"Hey, mind if I cut in?"

She snaps her head up, looking to the new voice filtering into the conversation.

Rumitar Shay stands there with a patient, waiting expression, a glass tumbler in hand.

Rey yanks her entire body away from Kylo, almost as if she had been caught doing something wrong. She can feel the moment that Kylo stiffens next to her, even though they're no longer touching. Her cheeks are suffused with heat again, and she wants to say something comforting, something reassuring that would make the situation better, but she doesn't know what.

She's not sure why, but just _being_ near him makes her feel positively indecent, like she's about to do something scandalous at any given moment in time.

"Um, yes," she blurts out, numbly. "Okay. Go with you. I'll do that."

Rey stands.

She has already started walking after Rumi, her arms and legs wooden, when she halts abruptly and suddenly looks back at Kylo again.

His eyes are still glued to his lap, and his fingers clench and unclench over the empty space where her hand had been.

* * *

Cut to Rumi. He wrings his hands together, and he doesn't quite look at the camera. "They were together for a while," he says at last.

"When she pulled him aside, we could all feel it. She wasn't happy. At _all_." There is a pause. "We thought that meant, you know, she might finally be sending him home." Rumi gets a funny look in his eyes.

"But we were all watching them from the window, and—it just—at one point, it just—didn't look that way. And I—" he stops, swallowing. "I didn't like it."

* * *

"...and we're keeping Kylo, of course," Snoke says, smoothly.

He lifts Kylo's headshot from the stack of photographs on the table and pins it firmly to the wall behind him, joining the sea of faces that Rey has already picked out.

They are sitting in the deliberation room with the rest of the producers, far away from the rest of the men who are now cloistered off in the rose ceremony room, waiting for the final decision on eliminations.

Rey, who had just been about to suggest the very same thing, stops short at Snoke's cavalier attitude. She clamps her mouth shut, staring at Kylo's unsmiling picture.

Before she’d stepped into the room, she had already made up her mind.

She was going to keep Kylo Ren.

It wasn’t even just about making a villain, or keeping him around for drama. Rey thinks that she genuinely likes him. Their conversation revealed a vulnerable side of him that she hadn’t been expecting, and even though she hadn’t gotten all the answers that she had wanted out of him before they had been interrupted, she can’t get the way he had carefully laced their fingers together out of her head.

There was something so interesting about him. Something about him that reminded her of _freedom_.

Sure, he didn’t seem to concern himself with the opinion of others very much, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was _bad_. It just kind of meant he was okay with going his own way. Rey finds that she can’t argue with that philosophy too much.

But Snoke had been too quick to jump on that when he pinned Kylo’s picture to the wall. She feels her brain stirring, working in slow-motion. There is something strange, something _off_ about all of this. Something that doesn’t quite make sense.

Rey thinks about how the host hadn't even pretended to give her a choice, and he had simply swooped in and made the decision for her.

She thinks about how he had assumed that her earlier conversation with Kylo had been a success, even though Rey hadn’t given any conclusive thoughts earlier when they'd asked her during her video confessional.

She thinks about how Snoke still seemed resolute on keeping Kylo on—despite Rey having expressed genuine interest in him, threatening the network's hard-won love story.

She thinks about how confident he seemed, that it would all work out in the end regardless of Rey's preferences.

_How did he even know all that about you? Didn't they have you fill out a huge questionnaire?_

Rose's voice, suddenly flowing into her head like a dam has ruptured.

_He doesn't even seem like he wants to be here at all._

Poe's voice, his head bowed down and unsure, like he was reluctant to break the news to her. Maybe he knew. Maybe they all knew how much she had been starting to like the surly, dark-haired man.

_If all I wanted was fame..._

Kylo's voice, cutting through her thoughts the loudest of all.

Slowly, slowly, the gears in her mind begin to turn again, and she realizes what she had missed, earlier, in her conversation with the man.

"Snoke?" she says faintly.

"Yes, dear?" The elderly man hums, not tearing his attention away from the wall.

"Kylo isn't one of yours, is he?"

Silence.

The room is frighteningly still.

No one moves, and the producers don't even dare to rustle around any papers as they look to Snoke, their faces frozen in fear.

Snoke cranes his neck around to face Rey, and his eyes are wide and very, very shiny. "My dear," he says brightly, "whatever would make you think that?"

But Rey is sick of non-answers and questions masquerading as answers. "Is he?" she demands, not backing down.

Snoke holds her stare across the room, his movements unwavering. His thin, sharp face is pinched and chilling as he fixes her with light-colored eyes, deeply unsettling in their hue.

An eternity passes between them.

Finally, his lips pull and stretch out into the thinnest smile, until Rey can no longer see the shape of them at all. "Of course not, my dear," he tells her, and his voice is light and airy.

"You're being a little paranoid, I think." He floats across the room, examining the remaining stack of photographs. "Now, if we're quite finished with _that_ , we have more work to do." Snoke taps one of the pictures on the table.

"What do we think of Armitage Hux?"

But Rey isn't listening anymore.

Twelve roses down, two more to go.

Six men stand before her, roseless.

Rey clutches the next rose closely to her chest, holding her breath. She glances around the room, watching each man with careful attention. Ingo, Poe, Finn, Rumi, Mitaka, Tritt, Thanisson, Erich, Rody, Masir, Gideon, and Sol already have roses.

Kylo, Hux, Ransolm, Seff, Ansiv, and Lodent do not.

"Hux," Rey says, twisting the second-to-last rose in her hands. "Hux, will you accept this rose?"

The ginger-haired man from Georgia skates forward excitedly—and perhaps it was inaccurate of her to say that six men were _standing_ before her, Rey thinks as Hux pulls to a stop in front of her in his wheelchair. She is tempted to cast a glance at the alleged perpetrator that had caused this incident, but she wills herself not to.

Rey had barely believed the story, when she had first heard it. It seemed too ridiculous to be true.

"Of course," Hux says, beaming at her, and Rey smiles weakly back at him. She arches over to pin the rose to his chest, and she gives him her signature pat when she's done.

Hux rejoins the men shortly after.

Thirteen roses down, one more to go.

Rey knows that, up until this point, everything has been done by the book. This is what Snoke had wanted her to do.

Save the villain for last, put everyone on the edge of their seat. And then, in the final moment, she would keep the villain in an upset decision, continue the drama in the house. Maintain the status quo.

And it isn't even that Rey's opposed to stoking the flames of drama.

She knows what is expected of her, after all.

She knows that, as the Bride, she needs to have an interesting season. She knows what her responsibilities are, and she knows that her season needs a villain. As much as she doesn't like it, since she signed her contract, she has an obligation to bring the network higher ratings. It was part of her job, now.

But she doesn't know if her heart could take being torn, conflicted, and confused for however much longer it took until Snoke deemed that it was time for him to take his puppet out of the game.

That is, if Kylo was a puppet.

_Was Kylo a puppet?_

Rey finally, finally allows herself to make eye contact with him.

She had been avoiding looking at him since she set foot in this room at the start of the rose ceremony, unsure if she would be able to do what needs to be done if she looked at him.

His eyes are dark, and wide, and trusting.

Rey tears her gaze away, her heart hammering away in her chest. She picks up the final rose, and she pinches the stem so tightly in her hands that she vaguely wonders if she could snap the flower off. She wets her lips, and she opens her mouth.

The camera zooms in on her.

Her throat is dry, and her tongue feels like sandpaper. She tries to work her vocal cords to make the sound, to form the name, but she can't bring herself to do it.

She is flailing in the water. She is sinking, she is drowning.

There is no longer any air in the room.

Rey makes desperate eye contact with Kylo one more time, and she drops the rose back on the pedestal. "I'm sorry," she barely chokes out. "I can't—I—"

The producers are stirring from their positions off-camera, and even Snoke has taken a step forward, his eyes glowing with displeasure.

She turns, and runs out of the room.

**#TheBride hashtag on Twitter**

tiffany @tifanyynicole92  
what just happened  
#TheBride  
[GIF of a white guy blinking several times, slowly]

pettyentnation @entouragetheories  
#SendKyloHome  
#DoIt  
#TheBride  
[GIF of Jess Day from _New Girl_ , mouthing: "Do it."]

CK @chesterkelvin  
who tf is Kylo Ren from #TheBride and why he is trending on twitter

Paige Yelnats @yelnats2956  
Last night I learned that a guy from #TheBride is in a wheelchair because he fell into a pool. Oh! I also learned he's a dentist. He's a dentist who is in a wheelchair because he fell into a pool.

Alice 🌸 @alllisonlovett  
the idea of having a loving partner BUT it's Kylo Ren  
#TheBride  
[images of a woman trying kombucha for the first time; the first image is YES and the second image is NO]

jess 🐙 @jessicaelena0  
the devil works hard but Snoke works harder  
#TheBride  
[screenshot of Rumi standing across from Kylo and Rey, with Rey's hand on Kylo's knee]

Grace Po @gracethechicken  
to all you Kylo haters out there, friendly reminder that Poe had time to think about what he wanted to say and he was insulting & aggressive and Kylo was nothing but cool & calm and the epitome of class  
#TheBride  
[GIF of Salt Bae flamboyantly sprinkling salt on a carved steak]

🇳🇿 • 🇫🇷 • @reyloise  
WE STAN A DARK PRINCE WITH REY JOHNSON  
#SaveKyloRen #TheBride  
[image of Rihanna on TV with a news headline underneath her: "WE HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO STAN-"]

ShesAllBride @ShesAllBride_  
me trying to see what Rey sees in Kylo Ren  
#TheBride  
[image of a black woman with her hands on her knees, squinting at an object in the distance]

Reality Eve 🌹 @RealitybyEve  
YOU KNOW WHO WOULD NEVER BREAK YOUR HEART, REY?  
#TheBride  
[images of the headshots of Dopheld Mitaka, Rumitar Shay, and Finn Storm]

Katey G. @kattygn77  
Me calling my mom, who's never seen a single episode, to vent about Kylo Ren on #TheBride  
[images of Quenlin Blackwell crying with her hands raised in a gesture, and Ms. Juicy huddled under a blanket on the couch]

𝔤𝔞𝔟𝔯𝔦𝔢𝔩𝔩𝔢. @watrbend  
UNPOPULAR OPINION: Kylo and Rey are super cute together and I'm rooting for them 🤷  
#TheBride  
[blurry screenshot of Kylo and Rey sitting outside together, looking at each other]

Hope @FlyingFlapjax  
Replying to @watrbend  
I'VE BEEN SAYING IT THIS WHOLE TIME 🗣️ 🗣️ 🗣️

Laura J @thelivinglaura  
Replying to @watrbend and @FlyingFlapjax  
SOOO I know someone who works for SW and I got my hands on this before it hits the shelves on Friday  
#SaveKyloRen #TheBride

Moira ✨🪐 I'll riot with you @fulcrumstardust  
Replying to @thelivinglaura  
…uh oh. You're about to blow up #EntourageNation twitter  
#TheBride

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, hear me out. I meant to have this chapter out _last week_ , but then plot happened, and this chapter ended up being way longer than 6K words. It is, in fact, 10.5K words. So as an apology for the wait, have a bonus 4.5K words!
> 
> PHEW! We are _finally_ done with Week 3. We have a few loose ends to tie up in the next chapter, but next chapter will officially be Week 4. I can't believe how long the events of Week 3 ended up being! I'm not sure that every subsequent week will be the same, but I definitely have a lot of plot to unpack.
> 
> Do you like the magazine cover? I commissioned the art from [bleumis](https://twitter.com/bleumis) on Twitter! I think she did a _gorgeous_ job. For those who might not remember, this is from the puppy photo shoot in Chapter 2 with Baze Malbus and _SW_. I have already added the full art in all its glory to the appropriate scene, but for those of you who haven't had the chance to check it out yet, here it is.
> 
> Isn't it stunning? I'm so happy with it, and I can't stop swooning over it. Also, this magazine cover will be relevant plot for the next chapter, so stay tuned!
> 
> I really hope you guys enjoyed this chapter. This has absolutely been a labor of love, and I always have so much fun writing this story. As always, thank you to my amazing beta [Flyingflapjack](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22628110)! She is the absolute bee's knees, and I couldn't ask for a better writing buddy.
> 
> I always appreciate every kudo and comment you guys leave, and I treasure them now more than ever in these troubled, quarantine times. If you have any thoughts or opinions or whims, please let me know in the comments down below. I'll see you guys next time in Chapter 6: Week 4, Part 1!
> 
> Follow me on [tumblr](http://laurarobin.tumblr.com) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/thelivinglaura)!


	6. Week 4, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who will Rey send home from last week's rose ceremony? Will she listen to her heart? This week, surprising plans are in store for the men, and new dynamics are revealed. Stay tuned—tonight's episode of _The Bride_ is all-new at 8/7c, only on FOBC!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I commissioned [curiousniffin](https://twitter.com/curiousniffin) to make something for my newest chapter, and she blew my skirt right up with this AMAZING, brilliant, incredible, show-stopping, magnificent, 100% perfect, one-of-a-kind moodboard! She's so talented, it's not even funny 😭 LOOK AT THE DOGGIES

For a few moments, the room is ensconced in total, utter silence.

Everyone is staring at the doorway that Rey disappeared through, frozen in shock. When it becomes apparent that no one else is moving, some of the men begin to fidget nervously, shooting glances at each other.

 _The Bride_ is reality TV, after all, known for its stunning antics and a flair for the dramatic. No one is sure what they had just witnessed, what they should be doing.

Was this all part of the show? Should they be reacting?

Rumitar Shay sneaks a glimpse at the host, James Snoke, and the rest of the production team.

Snoke's head is turned away from them, but Rumi can see that he is conversing in calm, hushed tones with the cameraman closest to him. The elderly man points a long, crooked finger at the doorway, at something just beyond view—and try as he might, Rumi can't make out what he's gesturing to from where he's standing.

He swallows, hard.

This isn't right. He needs to do something.

Just as he's about to step forward and offer assistance, _anything_ , Rumi feels a flurry of motion at his shoulder. Startled, he jerks his head around in a sharp movement, and he briefly catches sight of a pair of wild black eyes, honed in on the threshold of the room with single-minded purpose.

That is all he sees, all the warning he gets.

Before Rumi's mind can even catch up, a huge shape is hurtling past him at thundering speed, footsteps pounding away as the blur shoots down the steps of the platform. The subdued chatter that had started once more after Rey's departure swiftly dies away again.

Kylo Ren is across the room in three smooth strides, without ever breaking eye contact with the entrance.

The dark-haired man doesn't notice the sudden, wide-eyed attention of the field producers, the pinched, narrowing expression of Snoke as he blows past them.

He's out the door before anyone's even had a chance to open their mouth or try to stop him.

Rumi feels himself staring after Kylo in complete astonishment, his lips parted and mouth shaped in a little "o". His foot is uselessly toed forward, but the rest of him is locked in place, struggling to keep up with each new twist of events.

The other man had just _left_ the rose ceremony.

Were they even allowed to do that?

He had never heard of anyone breaking the formation that the men all lined themselves up in before, clear and painstaking and deliberate, at the urging of the producers.

Nothing was ever done without careful calculation for them.

Rumi turns his head haltingly to the other men, and he is glad to see that he is not alone in his reaction. Tritt Opan, in particular, looks extremely annoyed, and Poe Dameron is the least happiest that Rumi has ever seen him.

* * *

Cut to Finn. "What the [BLEEEP]?"

* * *

Cut to Tritt. "You know, I didn't realize _running after her_ was an option, or we all would've done it," he spits out caustically.

* * *

Cut back to Finn. "I mean, really, what the [BLEEEP], man?"

* * *

Cut to Poe, his brows pushed together. "Cut the crap. What's going on?" he demands, seeming to address someone off-camera. "Is Kylo going home or not?"

* * *

Cut to Thanisson, who tucks his hands beneath his chin. "Sorry, I missed the part where we were told we could go after her to save ourselves from elimination," he says dryly. "Do the other four guys know that that's an option? Or?"

* * *

Slowly, the room begins to recover.

One of the other men, Lodent Cowell, 32, from Chicago, Illinois, gives a nervous chuckle. "Okay," he says, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. "Wish I'd known we could've done that."

This eases some of the tension, and the men begin to shuffle around. Some of them pivot around to look at one another, offering apologetic glances to the remaining four, roseless contestants.

"Is…is anyone else going to go after them?" Tritt says suddenly, his shoulders tense. "We're not…just going to let him talk to her by himself, right? That's _so_ not fair."

He is met with silence, and Tritt clenches his jaw, whipping his head around to make eye contact with each of them. But the men deliberately keep their eyes glued to the floor, some of them clearing their throats and making humming noises.

Tritt's expression becomes stormy, and he waits for a few more moments, but at last, he retreats back into his place in line. Because he too, is unwilling to volunteer himself for the herculean task, and he has no choice but to accept that.

After all, it's hard to forget that Kylo is a literal behemoth of a man.

"I'll go."

Heads jerk sharply in the direction that the voice had come from.

Poe Dameron, with his hard gaze fixed on the doorway. He has already broken rank with the rest of them, stepping out of his position wedged between Finn and Sol.

"Really?" Ingo sounds a little unsure, glancing at the length of Poe. "Are you sure?"

He doesn't say it, but his meaning is clear.

Poe is of medium height and build for a male, completely average. When he pulls himself up to his full altitude, he is only a few inches taller than Rey. His arms, while toned, could probably be challenged by Ingo Salik, with his firefighter training. In other words, he is woefully inadequate if it comes down to a physical confrontation between him and Kylo Ren.

More throats are cleared as, one by one, the remaining men size up Poe.

Next to him, Finn shifts around uncertainly, and he reaches out to clap his hand on Poe's shoulder. "You don't have to," he mutters to him, quiet.

Poe works his jaw a little, and he slides Finn's hand off of him. "I do," he says gruffly. "Someone's got to." The silence elongates, and the older man gives a helpless shrug. "I don't trust him with her."

A small, appreciative murmur ripples throughout the contestants, and glances of admiration are thrown in Poe's direction. Finn still doesn't look happy about it, but he withdraws his arm. Poe clenches his jaw again, seeming to want to say something else.

Another beat passes, and he turns on his heel.

Just as Poe is about to descend the stairs, he's cut off by the distracting noise of large wheels squeaking and grinding against tile floor.

"WAIT," a voice hollers from off to the side, and everyone whips around to look at the source. Hux, pushing his wheels as fast as his arms will let him. " _No_ , I got this," he declares. "I'll go."

They are all stunned into another bout of silence, and Poe opens his mouth, aghast.

He looks over the length of Hux at his reduced stature, and all the danger and intimidation he would pose against an angry Kylo. Abruptly, he closes it again, at a loss what to say. But in his few moments of uncertainty, the ginger-haired man has already lurched forward, throwing all caution to the wind.

Poe sees the trainwreck before it happens.

He almost opens his mouth again, tries to point out to Hux the wheelchair ramp that is _right there_ , next to Rumi off on the far end of the room.

But it’s too late.

Hux was too excited, and the metal apparatus is already clanging down the stairs, jolting wildly with each and every step that he slides down, and he teeters so violently that he is almost thrown off the chair.

Dopheld Mitaka flies forward, hands outstretched to rescue Hux from his grisly fate.

In a breathtaking save, the ginger-haired man suddenly flips up just in time, just as he lands on the final step at the end of the stairs.

It’s a stunning finale to a gymnastics routine worthy of an Olympic medal.

Mitaka halts, and blinks. Slowly, he falls back, and for a few moments, everyone is deathly still. No one dares to utter a single word.

Calmly, without even turning around to address the men, Hux continues to wheel on. The only sound that reverberates around them is the scraping and screeching of his wheels across the room, and the men watch him with bated breath. Before anyone has the heart to stop him, his squeaking vehicle disappears out the door.

The seconds trickle by.

Finally, Ingo clears his throat. "Um," he says. "I'm not sure that was better."

* * *

Cut to Hux, sitting up very straight in his chair with his shoulders pushed back. "Someone had to do it," he says passionately. "No one else wanted to, so I had to do it."

The red-haired man shakes his head. "I don't trust him with Rey."

* * *

Rey makes it as far as three hallways down before she sinks to her knees, collapsing in a puddle of pink taffeta billowing around her waist.

She draws in deep, slow, calming breaths, trying to work through what had just happened.

 _I can't believe I just did that_.

The thought is jarring, and she scrunches her face up in a resigned expression. Cripes, had she really just run out of a rose ceremony? She never thought she would be _that_ person.

Sure, leads walk out of rose ceremonies all of the time, but they're usually carefully timed, and they're always orchestrated with the producers for dramatic suspense.

The producers had no idea she was going to do that just now.

 _Snoke_ had no idea she was going to do that.

Their camera angles probably hadn't even been prepared to capture her fleeing the room. Rey had no idea how much of that they had gotten, what footage they were going to have to work with.

How much trouble was she in right now?

Rey's eyes flutter shut, and a wave of nausea pulses through her head. She hadn't been about to say it.

In a true act of defiance against Snoke, the name that was about to come out of her lips had not been Kylo's name.

Rey has never liked the feeling of being trapped, of playing right into someone else's hands.

Her least favorite texts in college have always been Greek tragedies like _Oedipus Rex_ , where the hero would have his future told to him in no unclear terms. He would do everything in his power to avoid his terrible end, only to end up being snared by the threads of fate.

Rey hates that.

She doesn't want to be someone's pawn in a game, moved around on a chessboard to the producers' liking until she ended up fulfilling whatever part she was meant to play.

She wants to be able to choose her own way, make her own path, and have a true choice between the thirty men that she started out with—instead of being manipulated and shuffled around behind closed doors in conversations she was not privy to.

Her inner self had balked at the very idea that she might be being deceived, that her interest in Kylo might just be a means to an end, and that it was all part of the twisted game she was meant to play.

Kylo would get to know her, offer up enough shards of her own reflection until she is mired in his tangled web of half-truths, and then he would walk away. At a precisely determined moment.

Is that how it was supposed to go? Were Snoke's machinations the only reason for why she was starting to feel the way that she did?

Kylo had _read_ her, and fed it back to her.

Even now, Rey's temper flares and burns through her chest, eating away at her thoughts when she thinks about how easy it must have been. How they must be laughing at her.

All he had to do was memorize those blasted questions, and that was all it took. He would've known what made her tick, and of course he had said all the right things at all the right times.

Rey thinks about how neat the information must have looked, all laid out on a page for easy consumption.

Or pages. Had it been pages? What does her life even look like, in a file for others to read about her?

She feels moisture stinging at the corners of her vision, hot and unwanted, and she clenches her chin in a desperate attempt to fight it back. No. Not now.

She would _not_ ruin her makeup over this.

A pair of black eyes flashes through her mind, and Rey stills in her uncomfortable, hunched-over position.

She blinks several times, sticky lashes fluttering against skin as she beats away the tears. The fire in her heart dies down to a dull, flickering flame.

Rey recalls standing in the rose ceremony room, when she had finally mustered the courage to look him in the eye.

Kylo had stared back at her with that open, hopelessly trusting expression.

He hadn't seemed so treacherous then.

He was just a man, awkward and stocky, with too much bulk to his arms to look like anything more than a skittish, lumbering ox while he stood there, jammed between Rumitar Shay and Dopheld Mitaka.

She hadn't been able to do it.

Not with him _looking_ at her like that.

And so she had fled.

Bollocks. _What am I supposed to do now?_ Rey thinks miserably, swallowing the lump in her throat. She clutches at a handful of satiny material where her hands rest, and her grip clenches and loosens in her lap. As she stares and stares at her skirts, it vaguely occurs to her that she dislikes this soft, limpid pink.

Even this dress tonight had not been her idea.

The producers had insisted on something feminine, something romantic for this rose ceremony, and at the time, she wasn't entirely sure why.

Now she wonders if they hadn't been trying to highlight the storybook nature of it all—her, looking ever the rosy-cheeked princess, saving the heinous villain swathed in black at the very last minute.

God, the producers were so dramatic.

Who is she even supposed to give the rose to, now?

Her original plan, and Snoke's plan, had been Kylo all along. She hadn't really had one particular name in mind when she was standing up there. In truth, she might have been on the cusp of playing a speed round of eeny, meeny, miny, moe in her head.

Maybe she should go back, and insist that Snoke tell the men that the rose she had given earlier had been the final rose tonight. It would be dramatic, after all, and the cameras lived for that.

If Snoke isn't apoplectic enough to threaten a lawsuit with her over her contract, for letting Kylo go.

Rey doesn't think that she breached any terms of her contract by not agreeing to go along with the producers, but this area of law isn't really her expertise.

Maybe Kaydel, her old friend from the same graduating class back in law school, would have better insight. That is, if FOBC decides to sue her.

Rey lets out a low, defeated groan, resting her head between her hands.

"…Rey?" A hoarse voice chokes out.

She snaps her head up sharply.

It’s Kylo Ren, looking dark and foreboding as ever, standing in front of her.

Her mind blanks, and she has to take several moments to process the sight. He's heaving, slightly out of breath and off-kilter, and his black ensemble seems rumpled.

His features are scrunched up as he stares at her intently, and he pulls himself up in a nervous, belated gesture when he notices that she is staring without speaking. He looks like he had run straight after her out of the rose ceremony room.

She gapes at him.

Had he...had he _run straight after her_ out of the rose ceremony room? Who had let him do that? Were they allowed to do that?

Rey had expected Snoke, or one of the field producers coming after her.

Not… _Kylo._

Well, to be fair, she knows that she wasn't really supposed to do what she just did, either.

But somehow, this only worsens her sinking suspicions that he is working closely with the production team.

"Kylo?" Rey manages to say, but it comes out like a squawk. She clears her throat, as she struggles to lift herself—and the pink monstrosity around her feet—from her undignified position. "What—what are you doing—?"

But suddenly, he's at her side, and the blistering heat of his hands covers her own.

Rey jerks her chin to him, stunned, but he doesn't look at her.

Instead, Kylo focuses all of his attention on lifting her weight from the ground, overly careful and tender, as if it is the most important thing he could ever do. His dark eyes are trained on her tangle of skirts as he tugs her up, his large palm sliding to the curve of her hip as he sets her down.

For once, he seems completely oblivious to the contact, the little points along their bodies at which they are connected.

It’s this utter lack of self-awareness that makes her skin prickle with strange heat.

But Rey’s feet are unprepared to hit the ground as quickly as they do, and she staggers back on her heels. She would’ve toppled over with certain disaster, if not for the rough, calloused hand still resting at her side, which Kylo tightens protectively, preventing her from slipping any further.

For a few heady moments, she is balancing entirely with his support, suspended in the air like a flossy pink cloud.

With a gentle push, Rey teeters herself back onto the soles of her feet, and she feels dazed when she finally tilts her head up to catch a better glimpse of him.

"Um," Rey stutters. "What are you—?"

Finally, Kylo meets her eyes.

"Rey," he breathes.

He just stares at her for several, long heartbeats, his eyes flicking back and forth in tiny millimeters, passing over her features like he is taking in the visage of her whole face. "Are you alright?"

"What?" Rey's voice sounds tinny to her own ears, far removed from this bizarre scene where she is being comforted by the man she is torn over sending home. "Erm—I—yes? Are—are _you_ okay?" she asks, lamely.

He blinks at her several times.

A few heartbeats pass, and then his gaze flickers to his shoes. He swallows with great difficulty. "I…I don't understand," she hears him murmur.

"What—what don't you understand?" Rey says, feeling like a broken record that only knows how to ask stilted questions.

"Why…why wouldn't I be okay?"

God, they sound like a bloody E.E. Cummings poem.

But this time, it's Rey's turn to blink at him, and a hot, uncomfortable feeling slowly curls around her stomach. _Did he...not understand?_

"I—" she tries to say, but then stops. She wets her lips, and she tries again. "The final rose…"

It's no use. The words won't come, because she finds that it is infinitely more awkward to _put into words_ to another person how you were about to reject them.

Her sentence hangs in the air, lingering between them like a slow-acting toxin.

But all of a sudden, he gets it, because his eyes snap up to meet hers with alarming speed, and then he stumbles away from her, his hands snatching away from her own. She hadn't even realized he had still been holding her hands until they were gone.

The absence of his heat spears through her heart better than any well-aimed lance.

"Kylo," she blurts out, automatically lurching forward after him, but she isn't even sure what she wants to say.

"Rey," he whispers again. His black eyes are searching hers with a feverish intensity, but it's his quiet voice that gets to her. He sounds completely _mangled_. "I thought we—I didn't—I don't understand. Did you want me to—?" Kylo gulps, and he looks down at his hands. "I can—I can leave?"

"No!" Rey says desperately, taking another step forward, but she stops herself short. Wasn't this the very thing she had been considering?

He's staring at her now, his mouth twisted and looking confused beyond belief, and she knows how incoherent she must seem.

"No, no…don't….leave. I…that's why I…" Rey doesn't know what she's trying to say, but she thinks she's close to tears again.

But dammit, she isn't trying to sway him with waterworks, and she finds herself almost wishing that he hadn't followed her, because she's not in the right state to be _the bloody Bride_ right now, all proper and diplomatic.

"No, I—" Kylo sounds so flustered, and she watches as he moves toward her, only to stutter in his steps. "It's—it's okay. You don't have to be sad—over me," he rasps, in some strained effort to make her feel better.

It doesn't work, and instead, the tears spill over like a ruptured dam. She is startled to feel the wetness trailing down her cheeks, and her hands fly up to catch the first fat drops.

Is she making a great, blundering mistake?

And if so, which one is the mistake?

When he’s standing before her like this, it’s so difficult to believe that he’s capable of any level of deception. He seems so open and earnest, and she always feels like _she’s_ the one hurting _him_.

Rey draws in a sharp, deep breath, the air practically hurting her lungs, and she resists the fresh wave of anxiety rolling through her body. Her face is still buried in her palms when she slowly becomes aware of a loud squeaking pealing over to them, but she's too far gone to check for the source of the sound.

At least, not until a voice accompanies it:

"A- _ha!_ " Armitage Hux's voice floats across the hallway, and she squints between the cracks of her fingers to watch the ginger-haired man point an accusing finger at Kylo Ren. "Well, well, well. What do we have here, Kylo?" He flings his other arm out to Rey.

She is lost for a few seconds, unable to catch up to what she is seeing. But no, sure enough, that is Hux in his chair, confronting them at three feet tall.

_What is he doing here?_

With a start, Rey realizes that she is still crying. She rips her hands away from her face, mopping up traces of wetness with the pads of her thumbs, and stares at Hux.

Really, what is he doing here? What are they _all_ doing here?

There is complete silence in the hall, and no one speaks or moves for at least several moments.

“Why is Rey crying?” Hux demands at last, waving frantically in her direction.

Kylo blinks at him, and still he says nothing.

He looks at Hux carefully, and then his eyes flit over to Rey. She shrinks back, staring at him dumbly when she feels his gaze land on her. She is not sure what she thinks is going to happen next, or even what is happening now.

This feels like a denouement somehow, with none of the explanation or understanding.

At last, Kylo gives a jerky nod of his head. "I'll go back first," he mumbles to his feet. His shoulders are soft and slumped over, and he begins to move away.

Anxiety spikes through her.

Rey feels the strangest pull to him, like she _needs_ to go after him.

Before she knows it, she has already staggered in his direction, like a magnet being tugged along, and her heart is racing wildly as she hikes up her skirts. But her movements are too feeble, his legs are too long, and he is much faster and too determined to escape.

She gives up after only a few steps, staring after him helplessly.

How is it possible that whenever she talks to him, every incriminating thought or doubt she has ever had flies straight out of her head?

He disappears around the corner.

"Rey," Hux says, after a few moments. "Are you alright? He didn't make you cry, did he?" He sounds duly concerned.

A beat passes.

"No, Hux," Rey says wearily. "He didn't—"

"Hux," a new voice interrupts, smoothly.

Rey turns around, and her body unfurls from her tense posture.

 _Ah_. There he is.

James Snoke.

Finally, something that makes sense in all this mess. She's not sure what it speaks to, that she is strangely relieved to find his meddlesome self in the midst of this conversation.

"Snoke," Rey says.

"Rey," Snoke acknowledges, and he dips his head toward Hux. "Armitage, if I may? I'd like to have a word with Rey."

Hux falters. "Oh."

He looks back and forth between Rey and Snoke, as if this wasn't quite the outcome he had hoped for. The seconds tick by, and no one makes any immediate move from their position. Snoke folds his hands in front of him, gazing at Hux expectantly.

Eventually, Hux clears his throat, awkward, and he places his hands atop his wheels. "Alright. Feel better, Rey. I'll see you again soon."

He throws another quick glance at her, before rolling himself back down the hallway. Rey listens to the sound of his chair growing fainter and fainter, until he has disappeared out of sight again.

Rey is left alone with Snoke.

"Rey," Snoke says, pleasant. "What was _that?_ "

And there it is. He is looking at her with glassy, marble-bright eyes, like he could either pat her on the back or deliver her unto Hell itself at any given moment.

But this much, Rey had been prepared for.

"Is Kylo a plant?" she says tersely. She is too tired to care about her tone, or the fact that Snoke arrives armed with a whole camera crew behind him, filming whatever he thinks this is.

Snoke blinks.

She has surprised him. Rey can see that.

"This again," he says. There is a long pause, wherein he says nothing else.

Rey laughs dryly, and the taste of salt clings to the roof of her mouth. "Yes," she tells him. "This again. Believe it or not, it's important for whether or not I keep Kylo. Since I’m going to marry someone here."

Silence.

Snoke purses his lips, and for a moment, he looks like he is rolling around the flavor of something unpleasant on his tongue. She watches him, waiting.

The time stretches between them.

"No, Rey."

Her heart flops, and Rey squints at him suspiciously. She has heard the sound of her name in people's mouths all day, and she is sick of the syllable. Coming from Snoke, her name sounds like a reprimand for a misbehaving child.

"No?" she echoes in disbelief.

Snoke meets her gaze head-on. "No, Rey. Kylo is not a plant.” He pauses, readjusts the cuff on his right sleeve. “Now will you please return to the rose ceremony?"

Rey works her jaw slowly.

"Gentlemen, this is the final rose tonight."

Snoke has stepped forward, and he gestures to the lone rose still sitting on the pedestal. Exactly where it was laying half an hour ago. With a bruque nod, he withdraws into the sidelines, and he turns his attention toward Rey.

Rey plucks the rose into her hands once more, and she runs her gaze over all the men who stand before her.

Thirteen roses down, one more to go.

Five men stand before her, roseless.

She looks over each of them, and she gives an apologetic look. "Sorry about earlier, you guys," Rey says. "I was confused about a decision I thought I had made in my heart, but I think I found the clarity I was looking for."

* * *

Cut to Hux. He stretches a thin, lazy smile across his face, as he lifts his hand into the air and flaps it, once. "Goodbye, Kylo Ren."

* * *

Cut to Sol, shaking his head. "Apparently, Kylo made her _cry_ out there in the hallway. Can you believe it? Hux came back and we almost went ballistic when we heard."

* * *

Rey takes a slow, deep breath. The camera zooms in on her face, tracing the streaky eyeliner and clumpy re-applied mascara.

She idly runs her fingertip over one of the soft flower petals, finding a degree of comfort there.

* * *

Cut to Finn. He looks unconvinced. "Do you really think she's going to do it? Send Kylo home? It'd be really great if she did, but I just don't know."

* * *

Cut to Ingo. "Phew, it's going to be so much better in the house without him around. I swear he feels like a dark cloud sometimes. You never know what you're going to get with him."

* * *

Cut to Poe. "I have to believe that she has the good sense to send him home this time around. I have to. I mean, come on. He's…completely wrong for her."

* * *

Cut to Kylo. He's looking at the camera for a change, in a rare moment of candor. "I don't know what I was hoping for, from all of this." His voice is still small and hoarse.

"It would just be nice if she wasn't so sad anymore."

* * *

Rey exhales slowly, and she closes her eyes.

She feels strangely calm—calmer than she has been for most rose ceremonies.

In the past, she would always feel guilty or nervous in one sense or the other, having to send someone home. After all, Rey remembers all too what it feels like to be standing on the other side of the room.

Even though it just means a contestant just wasn’t compatible with the lead, it feels a lot more _personal_ somehow, getting sent home on this show.

It’s the biting sting of rejection, coupled with the looming sense of dread that maybe you’re not really that attractive or interesting compared to twenty other people, and now the nation is witness to that fact.

Rey never went without a rose, not up until the bitter end, but that didn’t stop her from wallowing in feelings of inadequacy during every rose ceremony.

She knows what it means to be sent home.

Her fingers tighten around the flower stem, and she wills herself not to twist or spin the rose anymore, lest it actually snap in half this time.

Does Rey believe Snoke’s answer?

Not really, to be honest.

Her eyes flutter open, and she immediately finds who she's looking for. "Kylo." The name glides off of her tongue without hesitation.

Kylo yanks his head around, and their eyes crash together.

* * *

Cut to Poe, gawping at the camera. “You’ve got to be [BLEEEP]ing me.”

* * *

Cut to Finn, who folds his arms across his chest. “Told you.” He gives a small shrug. “There’s a pattern going on here.”

* * *

Cut to Hux. He simply sits in front of the camera, blinking over and over again.

* * *

Or maybe it's more like, _Rey’s not sure_ if she believes his answer.

Snoke is a slippery creature, after all, and she wouldn’t put it past him to say whatever suits him to achieve an end. But she thinks that it's not really about believing Snoke—not anymore.

This is her real life, at the end of the day.

Rey meets Kylo’s stare unflinchingly, her hands utterly still on the rose.

Her heart has started to pick up speed again, now that the name has been said. Everyone is staring at her, and it’s probably just as Snoke had hoped, when he pitched this in the deliberation room originally.

Rey ignores the shocked expressions, the crestfallen looks from her peripheral vision. She keeps her gaze fixed on the man in the corner of the room.

He doesn’t move right away.

Rey holds her breath, slowly watching the shock and bewilderment play across Kylo’s face. And something else, too. Something...like _hurt_.

The betrayal she hadn't seen before, she realizes with a start—almost like he had been trying to conceal it from her, because she had been so upset earlier.

Oh.

 _Oh_.

Had he not expected to stay?

He...had probably thought she was sending him home right now, after their earlier conversation. That makes sense, she thinks numbly. But then why did he—? Rey's mind blanks.

Had he _really_ come back to this room, just so she could reject him on national television?

Why would he do that?

After another moment, Rey watches as the dark-haired man carefully schools his expression into something neutral, something indifferent.

A mask.

Not unlike the one he was wearing earlier tonight, at the cocktail party, when she had accused him of being here for ulterior motives. Rey chews on her lower lip so hard that she almost draws blood, and she releases it just in time.

He is still awkward, still graceless when he scoots his way past the other men, and when he stands before her at the podium, he is too polite.

"Kylo," she whispers. "Will you accept this rose?"

His eyes bore into her, revealing nothing. "Yes," he breathes, but there is a bent to the word. It's stiff, like he's saying it for her benefit and not because he wants to.

Rey's heart throbs.

When she pins the flower to his chest, she lingers for a beat too long before pulling away. She doesn't think he notices.

They are still staring at each other, and before she knows it, she's reached out and slipped her hand over his great big one hanging at his side.

He jerks, startled, and she immediately pulls away again.

They are both fools—him flexing his hand, her flushing with color over the strangely intimate touch.

Eventually, someone in the background clears their throat, and Kylo finally stumbles back over to his place in line.

Snoke steps forward, and he, at least, looks pleased.

"Gentlemen," the host says. "If you did not receive a rose, please take a moment and say your goodbyes."

* * *

Cut to Lodent, who lets out a gusty breath. "I don't understand," he says finally.

* * *

Cut to Ransolm Casterfo, 29, from Newport Beach, California. He grinds his jaw together over and over again, the ripple of movement splaying across his muscles.

"That was completely unfair. Kylo ran after her, so he got the rose. Is that how this works? We should've all been allowed to go after her, then."

* * *

Cut to Seff Hellin, 33, from Palm Coast, Florida, and his eyes don't quite meet the camera. "I won't say that wasn't…disappointing," he allows, running a hand through sandy-colored hair. "I mean…no one likes getting rejected."

* * *

Cut back to Ransolm. "Look, most of us didn't go, because we weren't trying to crowd her—but it didn't mean we didn't want to. You know? _I_ thought we were doing the mature thing, holding back." He gives the camera a lopsided grin, even as he lifts both his shoulders exaggeratedly.

"Guess not."

* * *

Cut to Ansiv Garmuth, 35, from Louisville, Kentucky, who is not in the confessional room. He's making his way across the cobblestone path leading away from the mansion, and the camera shakily tries to follow him.

When he stops suddenly, the camera almost crashes into him, and Ansiv spins around. "Get out of my face, man," he snaps, and his palm flies toward the lens.

* * *

Cut to Seff. He fidgets with the knot of his tie distractedly. "It's disheartening, going out this early. I don't really think I'm…worse off than some of the others here." He pauses. "Especially some of the others."

Seff takes a deep breath. "I just…I thought we could've really had something, you know?"

* * *

Cut to Lodent. "I wanted to be here." He glances off into the distance. "I really did. She's an amazing woman, and anyone could see that."

* * *

Cut back to Ansiv, his gaze cast down as he stands outside in the filtering dawn. His face is streaked with wetness. "Yeah, I'm upset. I thought I'd be here a little longer." He shakes his head wildly.

"I'm disappointed. I'm mad. This was just a [BLEEEP]ing waste of time. I think that's what I'm upset about the most. I didn't even get to show her who I really am. She just focused all her attention on this guy with the personality of a cardboard box."

* * *

Cut to Kylo. He sits in front of the camera, blinking languidly.

He doesn't say anything, and the silence drags out between him and the person perched on the other side of the room. The final rose is prominently displayed on his chest, pinned to his lapel like a blue ribbon for a prized pig.

Very slowly, he gets to his feet. The person behind the camera makes a small sound, as if startled. But Kylo doesn't bring himself to address them.

He turns and walks off-camera.

* * *

**#TheBride hashtag on Twitter**

Sammy The Bride Stan 💍💑  
@Samm81  
(っ◔◡◔)っ𝓇𝓊𝓃 𝓀𝓎𝓁𝑜 𝓇𝓊𝓃  
#TheBride  
[video clip of David Geddes singing "Run Joey Run"]

Let's get toasty 🍞  
@RoastedToast21  
Armitage Hux, on his way to the party:  
#TheBride  
[GIF of a toddler girl tumbling down a slide on a yellow ride-on car. The car dumps the toddler headfirst onto the ground.]

It'sBritneyBeach 🌞  
@BritchFit6151  
when there's a ramp but you take the stairs  
#TheBride  
[image of Reece Simpson from _Hood Documentary_ , grinning and pointing to his temple]

🧯🔥 Can't handle the heat, then get out of the oven 🔥🧯  
@PassMeTheBlunt  
hey Rey, I found you some baby pictures of Kylo  
#TheBride  
[image gallery of various photos of plain tofu]

The next day finds the men gathered around the couch in the living room, hiding stiff yawns behind their hands and rubbing the sleep from their eyes, when Snoke sweeps into the common area.

His arrival is strategically timed for the cameras, so they are unsurprised to see him.

"Gentlemen!" The elderly men greets warmly, his arms outstretched. "I hope you're all having a lovely morning."

A drowsy murmur of affirmatives echoes around the room.

Snoke hums. "I know last night was very emotionally taxing for a lot of you," he says, sympathetic. He clasps his hands in a figleaf posture. "What's it been like for you, from your perspective?"

His question is followed by dead air.

Some of the contestants crane their necks around to look at each other, while others simply cast their gazes down at their hands or carpet. At one point, Ingo Salik clears his throat, uncomfortable, and the camera swivels to him.

"Brutal," Finn cuts in dryly.

There is another strained, tense silence that follows his quick interjection.

* * *

Cut to Sol, who looks exasperatedly at the ceiling with a heavy groan. "Man, it's too damn early in the morning for this."

* * *

"Oh, really," Snoke says, his voice bland, but there is a gleam in his light-colored eyes. "Care to elaborate, Finn?"

Pause.

More heavy, uneasy glances are shared amongst the men, and after another minute, Gideon Hask noisily adjusts his seated position. When several people look at him, startled, he instantly freezes with a sheepish look.

But Finn says nothing else, and his hand curls into a small fist. The camera zooms in on the gesture, and the entrepreneur casts a glance off to the side of the room. After another beat, he looks out the window of the room, lips clamped tightly together.

No one wants to address the elephant in the room.

* * *

Cut to Poe, and he lets out a long sigh. "Finn's been...struggling in the house," he says.

The camera waits, lingering on him, but the older man doesn't add anything more.

* * *

"Kylo?"

The room is all hushed silence, everyone switching their attention to the dark-haired man hovering in his usual spot by the fireplace. Now that their numbers have grown smaller, he is the only contestant who still chooses to skirt around the edge of the room.

The rest of them are seated on the couches and armchairs, huddled together and usually chattering together amiably during these morning meetings.

He never joins in.

They never ask him to.

"Kylo, do you have anything to say?" Snoke asks, blithely.

For once, the dark-haired man's answer is immediate.

"No."

Kylo doesn't so much as twitch from where he stands, overly imposing at several feet taller than everyone else sitting down. He could almost pass for an ugly floor lamp, but his girth is too conspicuous to be mistaken for furniture.

"Alright, then." Snoke smiles buoyantly, as if he had expected nothing less.

The quiet elongates for another fraction of a minute—and the awkwardness with it.

* * *

Cut to Tritt. "Really? Nothing to say?"

* * *

The rest of the men begin to look equal parts cagey and annoyed, darting glimpses back at the disturbing giant behind them. But they remain silent, tamping down unspoken feelings in hard, pinched expressions of displeasure.

Finally, Snoke claps his hands together, breaking the spell. The attention in the room returns to the wizened old man, who had stood momentarily forgotten in the doorway.

"Today," the host says cheerfully, "there isn't going to be a date."

The camera sweeps across the room, taking in the increasingly dubious looks of the men.

"Why?" Ingo blurts out, bewildered.

The contestants around him echo the sentiment, drawing their bodies into furled shapes as they frown at the host. Usually, when Snoke comes around, there is sure to be a date card arriving soon.

"Because Rey has left town," Snoke tells them, still pleasant.

This time, it's more than Ingo who speaks up.

"What?" Tritt says, aghast.

 _"What?"_ Hux echoes.

"What?" Erich Datoo says at the exact same time.

"She's left Los Angeles," Snoke continues, a slow smile stretching from ear to ear.

His apparent glee is incongruous with any bad news that the men might expect to hear, so for a few extra seconds, they look at each other, unsure what to think.

"Gentlemen, it's time to _pack your bags_."

Poe is first to understand, his jaw dropping open as he spins around to jostle Finn next to him excitedly. Finn, who has finally retracted his gaze from the window in light of this new conversation, still furrows his brow for a moment longer.

Slowly, they all get it.

"No way!" Thanisson exclaims.

"Oh man, already?" Rumi says, a genuine expression of delight breaking out across his face.

"Where are we going?" That's Poe, who is now shaking Finn like an eager ten-year-old.

"Yeah, where are we going?" Finn says, batting Poe off his shoulder half-heartedly.

 _"Where are we going?"_ Sol demands.

The men have all caught on to the news, now.

One of the best reasons to go on _The Bride_ and _The Groom_ are the free, all-expenses paid vacations to exotic locations all over the world, which start a few weeks in—after the initial rose ceremonies have whittled down the men to a less astronomical number.

There are only fourteen men remaining now, so it only makes sense that they would begin to travel.

"Our first stop"—Snoke says, pausing for dramatic effect—"on this amazing journey that will take us around the world, will begin in a city full of art, culture, and bluegrass."

Ingo is bouncing up and down on his heels now, and Poe has slung his arms around both him and Finn. Most of the contestants are leaned forward on the couch, their faces lighted with exuberance.

"Rey will be meeting all of you…"

They strain their necks, breathless with anticipation.

"…in Asheville, North Carolina!"

The name of the city lands in the room, and the men explode into wild, raucous conversation.

"WHOOOO!"

_"Yes!"_

"Oh my god!"

While there are other exotic, romantic destinations that could be had, these international trips usually happen further down the line, when there are even fewer contestants remaining. The first _Entourage_ relocation of any season is usually a domestic stop, to somewhere still within the borders of the United States—so the contestants are hardly disappointed with the choice of city.

"You men will have about an hour to pack, and leave this house," Snoke declares. "You will not be coming back."

The men have already jumped to their feet, clapping and stomping their approval, crowding each other to get to the door. After these past few weeks, most of them are _sick_ of being stuck in this mansion in sunny California.

Asheville, North Carolina is beautiful.

Rey has never traveled to the South before, but she thinks that she rather likes it here. The ambiance of the place is unparalleled—tucked away in the picturesque mountains, surrounded by wilderness and nature in every direction.

She sees the wild expanse of jade green highlands long before they ever land, toward the end of her seven-hour flight. The peaks look like ripples on the surface of a majestic sea, rolling and cresting in some pattern only the earth could understand.

Rey can't stop staring at them from her tiny bird's-eye view window in the sky, tracing her fingertips over the glass pane.

In hindsight, she's not really sure what she had expected when she steps out of the plane for the first time. Maybe a frigid quality to the air—something a little nippy to balance out these gorgeous, lush mountains.

So she is entirely surprised when the first balmy gust of air dances across her cheekbones.

Rey stops in her tracks, eye wide like saucers, and she reaches up to touch her face. She releases her grip on her tiny rolling suitcase, snapping her head around to the camera crew behind her.

"It's _warm_ ," Rey breathes, delighted.

When they arrive at their luxury hotel, nestled within rolling hills with sweeping mountains overhead, the men are _ecstatic_.

The property is stunning; a grand, palatial estate stacked several stories high, boasting modern architecture with a handful of quiet touches that pay tribute to grander days long gone. On their way to their accommodations, they pass a gorgeous, historic Châteauesque-style mansion, complete with a wing of vivid, polychrome gardens as far as the eye could perceive.

They are even touted through a quaint shopping village, promising a winery, restaurants, shops, and a barn. The vast grounds are overwhelming and breathtaking, and the contestants are left reeling by the time they finally check in to their suites.

Their _suites_.

"One…two… _three!"_ Ingo shouts, and both him and Finn propel themselves onto one of the cushy double beds, delivering euphoric hoots for the cameras.

Finn is in high spirits, cackling like a maniac, and Ingo shoves his elbow in Finn's face good-naturedly.

"I feel like a _king_ ," Ingo declares with feeling.

The men have spilled into the suites with gusto, and most of them have gone off wandering to explore the various rooms attached. The bedrooms, however, are what truly make the space sumptuous and royal. With heavy, cherry wood furniture, and thick, swooping curtains curling around every detail, these rooms could have been crafted for old nobility—or visiting dignitaries, at the very least.

"You know, I wouldn't have immediately thought of North Carolina as a go-to vacation spot in my head," Finn admits, "but I'll be damned if I wasn't completely wrong."

"Oh, yeah," Ingo readily agrees. "We've got a lot of great stuff down here."

Being a native of Florida, Ingo had been mostly unsurprised by the jewellike terrain during the plane ride. It wasn't until they landed and started making their way toward the more fanciful trappings that he started vibrating with excitement, eyes glowing as they passed each new structure.

_"Ingo!"_

Sol's shout carries across the suites, and Ingo lifts his head from the pillow, blinking.

"Ingo, you gotta see this, man! Come here," Sol insists, his voice still echoing from a distant part of the building. His demand is followed by a loud chorus of whooping and hollering from what sounds like Hux and Tritt, and Finn folds his arms behind his head, rolling his eyes.

He's not a fan of Hux and Tritt.

Sue him.

"Uhhh," Ingo says, peeling his back off of the mattress. He casts an apologetic look at Finn, then lifts his shoulder in a small shrug. "Okay, I'm coming, you guys! Hold up!"

He jumps up off the bed and disappears out the door, leaving Finn to bask in the rest of his extravagant surroundings by himself. It's not exactly a chore, and Finn finds that he can't complain. He stretches like a cat, yawning and curling up on the bed.

If he wasn't on TV, he would almost be tempted to take a nap.

"INCOMING!"

A voice pierces through Finn's thoughts, and he opens one eye, almost annoyed, until he is bombarded by the sight of Poe Dameron hurling himself onto the mattress backfirst.

"Whoo!" Poe shouts, spreading out his arms like he's making a snow angel without any of the snow. His hand hits Finn's nose, so Finn nudges him back, grunting.

"You seem like you're having fun," Finn tells him, but his mouth curves into a grin.

"Oh, I most definitely am," Poe agrees. He turns his head to one side, squinting at Finn. "Why, aren't you?"

"This is a- _mazing_ ," Finn says without hesitation. "Couldn't have asked for a better vacation."

Poe snickers. "Wait until we get to _Europe_ ," he says fervently. "You won't know what hit you!"

On the plane ride over, Finn had confided to Poe that he had never been anywhere outside of the United States. Poe had been supremely displeased by this factoid, and he spent the rest of the flight regaling him about his travels and adventures in other countries. "You'd _love_ it here," he had kept saying to Finn.

It's not that Finn didn't think he would.

He had never been averse to the idea of traveling.

The truth was, Finn's family had never had a lot of extra money growing up, so international vacations just had never made it into their repertoire. But he is a little too embarrassed to admit that to Poe right now, so he allows the older man to carry on, thinking that Finn just needs to be encouraged to take the right vacations.

" _If_ we go to Europe," Finn says with a snort.

"Well, sure. Maybe we'll go to some place in Asia first. Thailand, maybe!" Poe exclaims, bolstered by inspiration. "Or Singapore." He sighs dreamily, almost like he is already envisioning bright oriental landscapes.

" _If_ we get to go," Finn mutters under his breath.

But Poe hears him anyway.

He stills, and his brows push together. Poe flips over on his side, eyeing Finn with careful assessment. "What do you mean by that?"

Finn sighs. "You know what I mean."

"Rey?" Poe prompts, cocking his head. "And Kylo?"

Finn gives a self-conscious shrug. "We haven't really had the chance to talk to her much lately, and you know it," he tells him. "She's spent all her time…preoccupied. With Kylo."

The thought of the dark-haired man is strangely not as upsetting as it once was to Finn. It is almost an old wound now, something that he's used to.

Lately, his mind has been concerned with other, more distressing matters.

However, his one lingering qualm is, he feels that Kylo's character and integrity is almost inherently opposite to his own. If Rey wants to choose him—if she's in love with him—what does that say about all of them? It's difficult for Finn to picture any one person who is in love with him, also being in love with _Kylo Ren_.

It's Poe's turn to let out a deep sigh. "I think she's just…confused," he says, flattening his mouth.

The silence stretches between them for a few moments.

"What if you're trying to play the hero where it's not wanted?" Finn says ruefully.

He thinks about the way Rey had looked at Kylo, when she gave him the final rose. The way her hand had shot out, pressing lightly on top of his own.

She hadn't done that with any of the rest of them.

Even if they hadn't been dead last.

Poe shakes his head. "I still have to try." He pauses, and his lips twist briefly. "My whole life, I watched my mother being manipulated by a man like that," he says. "I won't stand by and watch it happen again."

Finn stares at Poe for a moment too long. "You really like Rey a lot, don't you?"

A beat passes.

"Well…don't you?" Poe shrugs, looking away.

Quiet settles into the air, teetering between barely comfortable and not at all.

Finn opens his mouth, and he isn't sure what he's trying to say when he does. He just knows that he should probably say _something_ , but he is cut off by the sharp intake of breath that Poe draws in beside him.

Confused, he takes note of Poe's gaze having drifted past him, and he spins his head to follow the direction of his stare.

Sometime during the end of their conversation, a dark shape must have materialized in the doorway. He stands there in front of them now, his back stiff and the rest of him deathly still.

Kylo Ren.

He is frozen in his position, and it almost looks like he had simply been drifting past the room, not intending to linger. But his feet have stopped, and his dark, furrowed stare runs over the length of Finn.

Finn stares back at him, perplexed.

_Why is he just looking at him like that?_

Poe clears his throat first. "Do you…need something, Kylo?" he says, awkwardly.

Kylo's eyes flicker to the older man next, and he doesn't move or speak for several moments. Finally, he swallows, and he opens his mouth. "I—"

"WHAT THE _[BLEEEEP]!_ "

Hux's loud, indignant cry blasts through the main suite.

He sounds so truly insulted that even Finn and Poe shoot up from the mattress, both of them turning to look at each other. Kylo has also whipped his head in the direction of the voice, and footsteps are pounding across the floor from all over the rooms as everyone rushes to gather.

"Hux?"

"What's wrong, man?"

"Whoa, what happened?"

Kylo works his jaw for a few more moments in the doorway, but he eventually tears himself away from the room and wanders down the hall, presumably to join everyone else.

Finn and Poe are already pulling themselves to their feet, and they race to find where the rest of the contestants are now collected. They find everyone huddled in the biggest parlor room, with Hux hunched over something in his hands and his shoulders shaking violently.

"What. Is. _This?"_ Hux demands, flinging an accusatory finger in Kylo Ren's direction.

The dark-haired man blinks.

Armitage Hux is finally out of his accursed wheelchair, having been declared by the on-set physician that he is perfectly fit to resume his normal daily activities, so he stands before them all now for the first time in weeks, his face turning purple.

He turns around the book that he's holding with an outraged huff, and as Finn squints at it, he realizes with a start that it's not a book at all.

It's a magazine.

Well, it's an _SW_ issue.

Or, to be more accurate, it's the _SW_ issue, the one with the cover that Kylo Ren had snagged with Rey.

The photo of them together is just as bitter to swallow as the last time the men had been confronted with it—especially for the contestants who hadn't been on that particular group date.

Like Ingo Salik, who's staring at the cover in utter shock.

Or Tritt Opan, who is frighteningly quiet.

Even Thanisson Reed, who is not usually so prone to drama, narrows his eyes into tiny slits.

The look that the couple share is crushingly intimate, and it's difficult to deny that against all odds, they seem to look good together. Rey is seated nearly between his legs, tipping her chin to gaze directly at him, and Kylo looks sleek and composed all over—except for his own eyes, which meet Rey's stare almost reverently.

Emblazoned across the bottom of the cover are the words, "REY'S BAD BOY: IS HE HERE FOR THE RIGHT REASONS?" in a white, all-caps sans serif font.

The focus of this feature, clearly, seems to be on Kylo.

"It's here, too." Rumi's voice sounds stilted, and everyone turns to look at him. The broad-shouldered man gingerly picks up an issue on the coffee table, and holds it up.

The smooth, glossy cover of the incriminating photo flashes at them, catching the light.

Silence.

The men are struggling with mixed reactions, wavering between astonishment and resentment as they look back and forth between the real Kylo Ren, standing before them, and the _SW_ issues—almost as if the dark giant, who has yet to utter a single word, had somehow placed the magazines in this room himself.

"Damn."

Heads swivel to Erich Datoo, as he plucks something from the TV stand. When he waves it into the air, the big white letters " _SW_ " are clearly visible. Erich offers a tight shrug.

"Are they _everywhere?_ " Tritt says, his voice shrill.

The magazines are, in fact, _everywhere_.

Thanisson finds another tucked in their toiletry basket in the bathroom, rolled up inconspicuously at first like it is suitable reading material while one decides to take a shit.

The next magazine, Finn finds laying in one of the drawers of their desks. When Finn discovers that one, they're all pulling out drawers like madmen, and sure enough, they end up flinging magazine after magazine to the ground.

Later, Sol produces one seemingly out of thin air, when all he had been trying to do was search for extra towels in a supply closet.

The suites become like a deranged Easter egg hunt, and the men are turning furniture inside out to extract every last issue from their living quarters.

The producers have truly outdone themselves this time.

Throughout all of it, Kylo is characteristically silent, keeping himself tucked away in the main parlor while everyone dashes around like headless chickens. He doesn't move, and he barely looks at anyone while he sits there. The only time he gets up is when he wanders off briefly to use one of the bathrooms, and he is careful to avoid the rest of them on his way back.

At another point, Dopheld Mitaka cautiously sits down next to him. Kylo glances at him, but neither of them speak. Mitaka just gives him a small, weak grin.

When the rest of the contestants have gathered up all of the issues they could feasibly find and plopped them on the dining table, Hux scoops the magazines up in his arms.

"Where are you going, Hux?" Thanisson asks, baffled.

Hux doesn't reply.

The ginger-haired man disappears into the back balcony, and after exchanging some wary glances, most of the men follow him. The cameras, of course, also come along.

The lens zooms in on Hux just in time, as he leans far over the railing and loosens his arms.

The magazines flutter into the air, dropping down, down, down.

Into the large, round pool beneath them.

The pages hit the surface with a delicate splash, all of them at different intervals, but they eventually sink deeper and deeper until the magazines are completely submerged underneath the cyan hue. Finally, the last glimpse of a sleek, glossy cover, with the wide, entranced expression of Kylo Ren, dissolves into the water.

Hux dusts off his hands.

* * *

Cut to Hux, visibly fuming. "If I still had my wheelchair, I would've run them over with it first."

* * *

Unfortunately, they were unable to gather up _all_ of the issues, it seems.

The men are still finding random magazines lying around later that night, after they've already had room service dinner and are all lounging around the suite.

Either that, or the producers have a lot of copies in back stock.

It's just insulting, really. And honestly, it kind of hurts, trying to look at the girl whose affections you're vying for, openly looking so taken with someone else.

That's what Rumi tells himself anyway, swallowing back bile and resentment in his throat when he watches Tritt find another issue wedged between two porcelain vases.

The bald-headed man promptly chucks it into the nearest trash can.

When Poe finds the next one, tucked underneath the base of a lamp, he actually cracks the spine open—shocking his neighbors.

"What are you doing?" Ingo gasps, appalled.

"I'm _curious_ ," Poe says defensively. "Don't _you_ wonder what it says?" He jabs his thumb at the cover, tracing a circle around one of the headlines. "'The Bride's Thirty Men.' That's all of us, right?"

A low murmur of assent rises from the group, and after another moment of hesitation, Ingo leans over Poe's shoulder.

"What does it say?"

Poe is quiet while he reads, his eyes scanning over the pages. His mouth purses, and he lets out a small laugh. "Erich, you do _freestyle rap?"_

Erich shoots his head up, surprised. "What?"

"Hold up a second," Sol cuts in, practically climbing over three other people to get to Poe. "We're all in there?"

"Yeah," Poe shrugs. "Apparently, Erich can _freestyle rap_ about anything. Why don't you drop us some rhymes, Erich?"

Erich laughs sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. "Wait, I told that—I told that to them a while ago. They really put that in there?"

Suddenly, all of the men are clamoring over the only remaining, undestroyed copy of the _SW_ issue, eager to know what their own profiles say. As they continue to flip through the pages, it becomes evident that the feature had included bios about each of them—including the contestants that had already been eliminated on the first night.

" _Ingo_ ," Poe bellows, seized with uproarious laughter. "You love _JUSTIN BIEBER?"_

"What?" Ingo says, taken aback. "I mean, yeah! He's actually pretty good at—hey, let me look at that!"

He tries to take a swing at the magazine, but Poe throws it over to Finn next. Finn catches it with a flourish, and his eyes roam over the next couple of lines.

"Rody, you're a globally ranked champion in _Guitar Hero_?" Finn says, impressed.

Rodinon Riddell perks up at the sound of his name. "[BLEEEP] yeah!" he asserts, puffing out his chest. "I love that game."

Hux coughs into his fist. _"Nerd."_

Rody scoffs good-naturedly, dismissing the ginger-haired man with a brush of his hand. The group breaks out into laughter. "Please," Rody says. "You just _wish_ you had real skills like me."

More snickers, and even Tritt claps Hux on the back. The ginger-haired man gives a mock bow to Rody, and it goes on.

They continue to go back and forth over each other's profiles, passing the magazine around until each of them has had a turn to read out a fact about another contestant. They end up having a lot of fun, deriving real pleasure and amusement from the new things that they learn about each other.

It is only inevitable, of course, that at one point, Thanisson Reed says suddenly:

"What about Kylo?"

The group of men pause, and they exchange pointed looks. They have been laughing too much for the air to become uncomfortable, so Rumi shrugs. He is the one currently holding the magazine.

"Sure," he says. "I'll bite." He flips a few pages until he finds Kylo's name, and then he peers at the words. The men lean forward from where they sit, waiting with bated breath.

Silence.

"Well?" Masir Trach asks, impatient.

Rumi doesn’t answer right away. “Strange,” he murmurs, almost to himself. He keeps reading, but a crease slowly forms on his brow.

Finn cocks his head. “What is it?”

Another beat passes.

“Ummm...huh,” Rumi says, shrugging. “He has some facts about himself here, but...I just realized he doesn’t talk about any other people in his life.” He pauses, glancing up. “At all.”

The men look around at each other, processing this new information with puzzled expressions. Even though no one had gone out of their way to read the parts about their family aloud, they all had those details sprinkled in there.

Tritt scrunches up his nose. "Nothing about his friends or family? Or past relationships?"

Rumi scans the page again. "Nope." He pops his lips on the _p_ sound. "He just mentions that he likes Lucky Charms, and like….his workout routine. I guess. If you guys want to hear about that." His mouth purses slightly, as if to let everyone know exactly how he felt about _that_.

More silence.

"That’s kind of weird," Thanisson says finally.

Everyone on the show usually goes out of the way to pitch their families as much as possible—for introduction videos, for cast bios on Entourage Nation’s website. It’s the biggest selling point for any suitor, allowing a glimpse of their at-home lives around the people who love them best.

"Maybe because no one likes him," Tritt mutters. "I'd bet you fifty bucks he's probably estranged from all of his friends and family, with _that_ kind of personality."

The room is quiet at that.

Poe clears his throat. “I think it says a lot about a person,” he says suddenly, “the kind of relationship that you have with your family.” Everyone looks at him. “It...doesn’t bode well, if your prospective partner isn’t on good terms with their own parents.”

His words are met with a thoughtful, hushed murmur.

"Are we really surprised?" Hux retorts under his breath.

But they are sitting all close enough to each other that most of the men hear the ginger-haired man anyway. They shoot knowing glances across the room.

Surprisingly, it's Dopheld Mitaka, who had fallen eerily silent from before, who speaks up. "Sometimes," he says, "people just don't have good parents, and it's okay to not get along with them.” He gives an awkward shrug. “Not all families are so cut and dry."

Everyone looks at him, startled.

"I don’t think you need good parents to be a good person," Mitaka says slowly.

The rest of the men give each other careful looks, uncomfortable. The magazine gets tossed into the garbage shortly after that.

The next day, the first group date card arrives.

Masir, Hux, Tritt, Erich, Rumi, Gideon, and Sol go.

Their names are read off of the card like numbers for a lottery, and they all high-five each other jubilantly before hurrying off to get ready for the day.

The seven men return much later that night, dressing down their suits from the night portion of the date, and Hux is raving about the beauty of the quaint mountain town to anyone who would listen.

They had gone horseback riding, and everything about the day had gone like a dream. Hux, especially, had been enchanted with the gorgeous scenery that they had encountered, and he spends the late hours of the night recounting every last detail to the men huddled together.

"…there's really just something about the South that you can't beat," Hux sighs dreamily. "All those old, romantic buildings, too. Don't you just wish it was back to the cotton-picking days, sometimes?"

Silence.

Finn blinks. "What, like, slavery?"

The air becomes infinitely awkward, and the rest of the contestants cast their gazes around the room, to the ceiling, at their shoes.

Hux reels back, frowning. "Don't be crass, Finn. Of course I'm not talking about slavery." He draws himself up. "I'm talking about all those beautiful, old plantation houses in the South."

Finn stares at Hux. "So you mean, like, slavery."

"What?" Hux narrows his eyes. "Why are you always talking about slavery? No, not slavery. Just, houses that were around back in the 1800s to 1900s." The red-haired man shrugs. "Back when everything was simpler, and easy."

Blink, blink. "Because of slavery," Finn says slowly. "Everything was simpler, and easier for you, because of slavery."

Rumi softly clears his throat.

"God, Finn, everything is not about race," Hux exclaims. "Sometimes, I just like old houses, okay? This has nothing to do with race."

The seconds tick by. No one dares to move a muscle.

Finn stands. "I need a drink."

He turns, and leaves the room.

Poe catches up with Finn on his way to his suite, but Finn won't look him in the eye.

They stand there for a few heartbeats, not saying a word. Poe technically blocks his path, but Finn could easily circle around him if he decided to.

He doesn't.

"Finn," Poe says, his voice quiet. "Are you alright?"

Finn takes a deep breath, rubbing his temples. "No," he says. "Not really."

It isn't easy for him, living with Hux.

The ginger-haired man seems perpetually unaware of what he's saying, and even though it has become second nature for Finn to automatically speak out against such glaring errors, he's also overly aware of what it means for him to be a contestant on this show.

The public eye is on him, always.

And it is _such_ a terrible stereotype, to be aggressive or violent, being who he is.

He feels drained, trying to keep himself in check so he doesn't seem like he's always antagonizing the other contestant. Lord knows he didn't come on this show to develop a villainous reputation—not when he has his own startup company to think about.

Poe's mouth twitches, and he reaches over to gather the other man into a tight, bear-hug.

A few days pass before the second group date card arrives.

They are all gathered in the main parlor again, and Snoke has just dropped the thick envelope onto the coffee table. The contestants wait until he has fully disappeared out of sight before Sol bounds over and plucks the card into his hands.

Today, the energy in the air is not like a lottery.

There is none of the excitement or anticipation that accompanies the first group date card of the week, when everyone is simply eager to get out of the house.

Instead, the atmosphere is like the Hunger Games, filled with white-hot anticipation and a frenzy of nerves.

No one wants to hear their name on that card.

Sol begins to read.

"Poe."

Polite clapping. Of course—Poe has already had his one-on-one date last week.

"Mitaka."

The men all clap again, and while it might be mildly disappointing for Mitaka, he has already had the very first one-on-one date. This, too, is unsurprising.

"Rody."

Clap, clap, clap, but Rodinon's shoulders droop.

"Thanisson."

The smattering of applause becomes more strained.

"Ingo."

Ingo's disappointment is palpable, and this time, the clapping is only from a handful of people.

One name left.

Everyone holds their breath, realizing at the last second the only two contestants whose names had not been called.

Sol's eyes flicker around the room, pausing for dramatic effect.

The room becomes so quiet that the only audible sound is the ticking of the hands on the clock behind them. That, and the thin, white noise floating from the cameras, almost imperceptible to the human ear.

Sol opens his mouth.

"Finn."

Finn presses his lips together tightly. There is no clapping from the other contestants this time.

Everyone's gaze drifts over to the corner of the room. Kylo sits ramrod straight, not moving a single muscle. He doesn't look at any of them.

Mitaka is first to break the silence. "Congratulations, Kylo," he says with genuine cheer.

The dark-haired man's eyes cut to him, wary at first. Slowly, he swallows.

"Thanks."

Kylo Ren has the one-on-one date this week.

**#TheBride hashtag on Twitter**

Life's a beach, surf the wave 🌊  
@SalGal24  
The person who had to clean the pool  
👁️👄👁️  
#TheBride  
[GIF of Kanye West, staring down the camera: "Are you serious right now?"]

✨Call me Lara ONE MORE TIME 👊😤✨  
@LauraOrBust  
This is why we don't trust the South  
#HuxIsCanceled  
#TheBride  
[GIF of Annalise Keating from _How To Get Away With Murder,_ shaking her head, picking up her bag, and leaving]

Dream Weaver🌙  
@JSR727  
Replying to @LauraOrBust  
ATL DOES NOT CLAIM HIM!!! 😭😭😭  
#TheBride

🔥🔥Don't come to my bbq if ya ain't finna get roasted🔥🔥  
@MellyDontCare32  
when the only thing interesting about you is that you like Lucky Charms (◡‿◡✿)  
#TheBride

Kylo can GET IT💦Don't @ me about it 💁  
@Reneégade  
Omg, they're in my hometown this week!!! 😍  
#TheBride

Hope✨ | FlyingFlapjack @FlyingFlapjax  
THEY BELONG TOGETHER AND YOU CAN'T TELL ME OTHERWISE 😤😤😤 See the way these bbs look at eachother??? CAUSE I DO, AND IT'S LOOOOVE  
#TheBride  
[image of April 2020 _SW_ magazine cover]

8 Replies | 209 Retweets | 1,007 Likes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I'm always apologizing at the end of every chapter, but sometimes, that's just the way the cookie crumbles!! 🍪🤷 I'm sorry for the wait, everyone. Some of you probably noticed that this chapter is a whole week later than usual, and I'm not really sure how that happened.
> 
> Again, this chapter was only meant to be about 6K words long, but my brain took me somewhere else. This chapter is a whopping 12K words! (My birthday was also last weekend on Easter, so I took a few days off to celebrate. That ended up cutting out more writing time then I realized, and I legitimately typed up 4,138 words yesterday to make up for it.)
> 
> All in all, I really hope you enjoyed this chapter! ❤️❤️❤️ I know we spent a lot of time with the men this week, but for good reason, and things are beginning to unfold just as I hoped.
> 
> I want to take this time to sincerely thank all my readers who have been following this story so far. I've been reading each and every one of your precious comments, and it means so much to me that you guys are excited enough about the story to share elaborate theories and leave your thoughts and comments with me.
> 
> Truly, TRULY from the bottom of my heart, thank you. You guys make this story worth writing, and it is extremely humbling to know that you trust me with the direction of this story. I have a very clear, specific vision for what's to come, and I can't wait to share it with all of you!
> 
> Also, I hope you all will continue to _mind the tags_. I will be adding more as they come up, but some of the tags are spoilers in themselves, so I'm refraining from adding them all at once. 
> 
> Last but not least, I just wanna say that HOPE IS THE ABSOLUTE SHIT 🔥🔥🔥 and she is my ride-or-die, the backbone of this story, the superglue between all my whims and half-baked ideas. She wrote/ghost-wrote all of the social media posts in this chapter again, and I really couldn't have gotten this chapter out without her. [Please send her all of my love!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22628110)
> 
> If you're liking the story, kudos and comments would mean the world to me. I truly treasure them with everything that I am, and they fuel my writing like no other. If you have any thoughts, theories, or whims, I would love to hear them in the comments down below! Thank you so much for reading, and I'll see you all next time in Chapter 7: Week 4, Part 2 💗
> 
> Follow me on [tumblr](http://laurarobin.tumblr.com) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/thelivinglaura)!


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